In 1880 the total of inmates in insane asylums in the United States included 20,695 males and 20,307 females. In 1910, thirty years later, the number of male inmates had increased to 98,695 and the number of female inmates to 80,096. The excess of men among admissions in 1910 indicated a still further increase in the proportion, namely, 128 males to 100 females.
BEING WELL-BORN. An Introduction to Eugenics. Michael F. Guyer, Prof. Zoology, University of Wisconsin. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, Ind. 1916.
The records of the inheritance of insanity, imbecility, feeble-mindedness and other forms of nervous and mental defects are truly startling. Active researches in this field have been in progress now for several years, and as each new set of investigations comes in the tale is always the same. It is questionable if there is a single genuine case on record where a normal child has been born from a union of two imbeciles. Yet the universal tendency is for defective to mate with defective. Davenport gives a list of examples, beginning with such a one as this: “A feeble-minded man of thirty-eight has a delicate wife who in twenty years has borne him nineteen defective children.” Little wonder, in the light of such facts as these, that the number of degenerates is rapidly increasing in what are called civilized countries. But it may be urged, these are exceptional cases, there is surely no considerable number of mental defectives who are married. Let us look at the available facts. In Great Britain in 1901, of 60,000 known feeble-minded, imbeciles and idiots, 19,000 were married, and in the same year, of 117,000 lunatics, 47,000 were married; that is a sum total of 66,000 mentally defective individuals were legally multiplying, or had had the opportunity to multiply their kind, to say nothing of the unmarried who were known to have produced children.
In the State of Wisconsin I note from the tenth Biennial Report of the Board of Control that of 574 patients admitted to the Northern Hospital for the Insane during the year from July 1st, 1908 to June 30th, 1909, 274 were married, and 29 others were known to have been married; this is a total of 303 out of 574, considerably over half. At the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane we find the conditions are no better, for out of 499 admitted in the year of 1909–10, 208 were married and 65 others had at some time been married, or a total of 273 out of 499. There is every reason to believe that conditions are approximately similar in other states. P. 231–232.
One of the most disquieting facts in the situation in most states is that many patients—an average of approximately 1,000 a year, in Wisconsin for example—are on parole, subject to recall. This means that although it is recognized that these patients are likely to have to be returned to the asylum or hospital, little or no restraint in the meantime is placed on their marital relations. P. 234.
SOCIAL ASPECTS. Wm. E. Kellicott.
In the U. S. the census of 1880 reported 40,942 insane in hospitals, and 51,017 not in hospitals, a total of 91,959 known insane. In 1903 the number in hospitals had increased to 150,151. The number not in hospitals was not known and cannot be determined accurately, but it is conservatively estimated as certainly not less than 30,000, and probably it is far greater than this. But taking a total of 180,000 known insane as a conservative figure, the ratio of known insane in the total population was 225 per 100,000 in 1903, as compared with 183 per 100,000 in 1880. P. 33.
The latest census reports for the U. S. give data relative to the dependents and defective in institutions. Insane and feeble-minded, at least 100,000; paupers in institutions 80,000, ⅔ of whom have children and are also physically and mentally deficient: prisoners 100,000; juvenile delinquents 23,000 in institutions; the number cared for in hospitals, dispensaries, homes of various kinds in the year 1904 was in excess of 2,000,000. From these figures we get a rough total of nearly 3,000,000. The foregoing are representative data:—they are published by the volume. It is always the same story—rapid increase of the unfit, defective, insane, criminal, slow increase, even decrease, of the normal and gifted stocks. It is with such conditions in mind that Whetham writes: “This suppression of the best blood of the country is a new disease in modern Europe; it is an old story in the history of nations, and has been the prelude to the ruin of states and the decline and fall of empires.” P. 35.
EUGENICS RECORD BULLETIN. No. 5. A Study of Heredity of Insanity in the Light of the Mendelian Theory. A. J. Rosanoff, M.D., and Florence I. Orr, B.S. Reprinted from American Journal of Insanity. Vol. XXVIII ... 1911. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y.
In the report of the year ending September 30th, 1909, the New York State Commission in Lunacy gives the number of insane patients in state hospitals and private institutions as 31,540, or one to 276 in the general population. This figure does not include the inmates of institutions for the feeble-minded and for epileptics, it does not include the neuropathic subjects who find their way into prisons, reformatories, almshouses, dispensaries, hospitals for incurables, general hospitals, neurological clinics, etc., and above all, it does not include the many neuropathic subjects whose infirmities are latent, or of such nature as not to incapacitate them for ordinary occupations and life at large. P. 245.