Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

by Eugene S. Talbot

FIG. 101.

Aside from their general significance as stigmata of degeneracy, anomalies of the external ear have been found frequently associated with mal-development of lungs, kidneys, liver, and intestines. Hidden spina-bifida is often associated with the same anomalies, and not rarely with irregular development of the genital organs of both sexes. Albinism or deficient pigment in the skin and hair is not only often associated with grave degeneracies, intellectual and moral, but appears combined with mal-development of the spleen, liver, and kidneys. The opposite state (melanoderma, or black skin) is often associated with similar deformities, especially with early precocity in development. It has also been found in connection with hairlessness and irregularities in development of the teeth and jaws.

The deformities of the chest and their resulting interferences with respiration are not only associated with conditions like narrowing of the pulmonary artery, of the aorta, and with cardiac deformities, but also lead to diminution of the respiratory power and, in consequence, to conditions predisposing to pneumonia and consumption. They are also, as my own observation has shown, associated with deformities of the face, of the nose, of the mouth cavity, of the palate, and of the jaws. These conditions result in mouth breathing and in other conditions which predispose to the attacks of microbes. The deformities of the arterial system coexisting with checked development of the chest are apt to extend to the blood vessels of the kidneys, and therefore to retain these in the embryonic condition, thus predisposing them to disease. To a somewhat lesser degree this arterial condition coexisting with checked development of the chest or with the other arrested conditions of development associated with it, may extend to the liver in such a degree as to prevent it destroying the toxins of typhoid fever and allied diseases, thereby increasing the dangers from these disorders. The same influence may be exerted on the spleen and suprarenal capsules, thus interfering with the physiologic guards these organs furnish against disease and its results. Not infrequently do these last conditions tend to give an epileptic character to degeneracies which would otherwise be destitute of it. With the interference with the proper blood supply, due to checked conditions of the organs named, may occur gout, diabetes, and many forms of rheumatism with their secondary consequences.

The imperfect and irregular action of the lungs associated with the arrests in development of the face, nose, palate, jaws, and chest may produce an irregular blood supply to the brain, which will exaggerate the mental instability of the degenerate.

Among the conditions which are expressions of degeneracy of the body, combined with degeneracy of the head and face, are three conditions known as infantilism, masculinism, and feminism. Practically all three are arrests of development of the promise of the child type. Owing to the struggle for existence which occurs at puberty between the old type of the chondrocranium and its new type as supplemented by the dermal bones, the nervous system takes a distorted ply which arrests both the bodily, nervous, and mental development at certain points. In infantilism the arrest is of the future promise of the child, so that the body and face remain at the childish point, or the body and nervous system are checked, or finally the nervous system or certain organs alone are checked while the body goes on to full development. Not infrequently the face is arrested at any period from birth to puberty (Fig. [101]). Hence the reason many persons retain their youthful appearance throughout life. These people are often vain and egotistic. The mental stamina is weak, and they are frequently unreliable, while the females are often prostitutes or prurient prudes, hysteric reformers or gossip mongers.

FIG. 102.

The female type, from the standpoint of bodily and nervous development, most nearly approximates the promise of the child type, and checks of development will result in masculinism and feminism. In the first the female has proceeded so far in development as to have female organs and their functions while retaining traces of a predominant character of the lower male type. In the second, the male has proceeded along the line of evolution toward the female type, but ere sex has been fixed, further development has been checked and the male type is finally assumed as the predominant one. Both sexes proceed embryologically from an indifferent type nearly resembling the hermaphroditic type found in the lower vertebrates. The arrest of development may therefore take place at any point in the embryonic evolution. The male may preserve only the female breasts[232] (Fig. [102]), while normal in other respects; or, again (Fig. [103]), present cryptorchidism or sloping shoulders, and be otherwise masculine. On the other hand, his nervous system may have taken such a ply that at the period of puberty the sexual instincts may be female in type. In some instances, this may extend merely to an extreme modesty toward males, to an intense liking for female occupations and disgust for male occupations. In the female precisely analogous conditions may occur. In certain cases the sex side is entirely dormant until awakened at puberty. Education of these cases of arrested development may give the sex direction rather than any in-born tendency. In one case, a male who had undergone arrest of development in his evolution towards the female type was brought up as a girl, had unusually pleasing womanly qualities; as a result was married twice to intensely devoted husbands, and the real sex was never even suspected until post-mortem examination revealed that the supposed woman was a male. In other cases where the nervous system has taken one sexual ply, while the body has taken another, an exceedingly unfortunate class of beings results. This class of beings needs especially careful training during puberty and adolescence. In some instances in addition to the sexual distortion there exist in these beings conditions of mental defect and moral obliquity. In the last case they approximate the criminal type. In the first case residence in an insane hospital protects the community and these beings against themselves. In some instances no mental defect nor, in a strict sense, moral obliquity occurs. Here the patient requires very careful study from every standpoint.[233] There is in the higher and lower races a tendency in different directions as to the predominance of sex. The woman of the lower races more nearly resembles the male of the race. The male of the higher races more nearly resembles in structure the female of his race than does this female the females of the lower race. This is in part due, in the course of evolution, to the intrusion of the male on female occupations, since all occupations, other than war, hunting, and fishing, were created by women.[234] The male, however, in the higher races, while thus taking on the female intellectual and æsthetic qualities, retains the male sexual characteristics, mentally and physically, but in accordance with the law of evolution, these manifest themselves less explosively as in the case of the female. As the victim of masculinism or feminism is a degenerate the explosive manifestations are more marked. Every one of the stigmata of degeneracy already described may coexist with any one of the three conditions named: infantilism, masculinism, and feminism.