Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

by Eugene S. Talbot

This principle of biologic degeneration, long recognised, was most lucidly enforced by Dohrn[24], whose views were later extended by Ray Lankester. The parallelism of animal degeneracy with that of man, so clearly evident even in the parasitic nature of defectives, was, as Meynert[25] showed, due to the fact that the fore-brain is an inhibitory apparatus against the lower and more instinctive natural impulses. The higher its development the greater is the tendency to subordinate the particular to the general. Even in insects a high social growth occurs, as in the bee and ant communities. The same is the case in the development of man; in the infant, a being entirely wrapped in its instincts of self-preservation, the “primary ego” is predominant and the child is an egotistic parasite. As development goes on this standpoint is passed, conscience assumes its priority, the fore-brain acts as a check on the purely vegetative functions and the “secondary ego” takes precedence over the primary one; this is the general order of society, designated as civilisation or social order. If this inhibition become weakened or disordered, predominance of the natural instincts or impulses occurs, and when it is totally lost the individual is in the position of a criminal who opposes the ethical order of society—a parasite, and one of the worst kind who not only lives upon his host but destroys him in doing so.

Hence degenerate tendencies are reversions in type indicating the original source of the inhibition.

The tree of Moreau[26] illustrates clearly the essential principles of these inter-relations of defect, further elucidated by the observations of Sander[27] on the connection of deformed central nervous systems with mental and moral disorder.

NERVOUS HEREDITY.

	{	Science
Exceptional Intelligence		Arts	{	Music. Painting.
		Letters
	{		{	Paretic dementia.
				Paralyses.
		Brain		Tumours.
Lesions of the Nerve Centres				Brain Softening.
				Congestion.
				Softening of Spinal
		Spinal Cord		Cord.
				Myelitis.
	{	Epilepsy.
		Chorea.
Neuroses		Stammering.
		Convulsive Fits.
		Hysteria.
	{	Utopians.
Intellectual States		Eccentrics.
		Mixed Conditions.
	{	Prostitutes.
Emotional States		Criminals.
		Unstable.
	{	External.
Neuralgia		Internal.
	{		{	Symptomatical.
		Acute Insanity		Idiopathic.
				Alcoholic.
Psychoses		Imbecility
		Idiocy	{	General Insanity.
		Chronic Insanity		Dementia.
				Partial Insanity.
			{	Congenital Blindness.
				Anæsthesiæ.
Special and General Conditions of the Senses				Deafness.
				Hyperæsthesiæ.
Nutritional Defect.

The extensive studies of Niepce,[28] Vogt,[29] and others on idiot biology sought to show that the brain was not merely arrested in development, but sometimes reverted even as low as the sauropsida type (reptiles and birds). Grohmann,[30] as early as 1820, had “often been impressed in criminals, especially in those of defective development, by the prominent ears, the shape of the cranium, the projecting cheek-bones, the large lower jaws, the deeply placed eyes, the shifty, animal-like gaze.”

Maudsley[31] observes that in the case of such an extreme morbid variety as a congenital idiot we have to do with a defective nervous organisation. Marchand, in the brain of two idiots of European descent, found the convolutions fewer in number, individually less complex, broader and smoother than in the apes. The condition results neither from atrophy nor mere arrest of growth, but consists essentially in an imperfect evolution of the cerebral hemispheres or their parts, dependent on an arrest of development. The proportion of the weight of brain to that of body is extraordinarily diminished. With the brain of the orang type comes a corresponding defect of function. With this animal type of brain in idiocy sometimes appear animal traits and instincts. One class of idiots is justly designated theroid, so brute-like are its members.

The human brain in the course of fœtal development passes through the same stages as other vertebrate brains, and to some extent these transitional stages resemble the permanent forms of their brain. Summing up, as it were, in itself the leading forms of vertebrate type, there is truly a brute brain within the man’s, and when the latter stops short of its characteristic development, it is natural that it should manifest only its most primitive functions.

It must, however, be pointed out that the human brain, even of the idiot or microcephales, never resembles, as a whole, the brain of any anthropoid or lower animal form. Such a position was maintained by Vogt, but has long since been abandoned. The existing anthropoid apes are not the ancestors of man, and have pursued a different development.[32]

Despine’s[33] researches revealed the absence of human checks on the instinctive tendencies in criminals. He, however, started from the doctrine of moral imbecility as elaborated by Rush, Prichard, Brigham, Ray, Galt, and others. Bruce Thomson,[34] testing Despine’s results by primitive races and Scotch criminals, found that defective, abnormal, and anomalous states of the instinctive faculties exist in entire races and in the “moral idiots” that occur in the best races. Criminals form a variety of the human family quite distinct from law-abiding men. A low type of physique indicating a deteriorated character gives a family likeness due to the fact that they form a community which retrogrades from generation to generation. The low physical condition of juvenile criminals in reformatories, &c., becomes at once obvious if they be compared with healthy, active school children. They are puny, sickly, scrofulous, often deformed, with peculiar, unnaturally developed heads, sluggish, stupid, liable to fits, mean in figure, and defective in vital energy, while at the same time they are irritable, violent, and too often quite incorrigible. The adults usually have a singularly stupid and insensate look. The complexion is bad. The outlines of the head are harsh and angular. The boys are ugly in feature, and have, as a rule, repulsive appearances. These diseases of criminals are a proof of their low type and deteriorated condition. Their deaths are mainly due to tubercular diseases and affections of the nervous system. In the greater number crime is hereditary, a tendency which is, in most cases, associated with bodily defect, such as spinal deformities, stammering or other imperfect speech, club-foot, cleft-palate, hare-lip, deformed jaws and teeth, deaf-mutism, congenital blindness, paralysis, epilepsy, and scrofula.