In his study of two thousand children tested by the Binet measuring scale for intelligence, Doctor Henry H. Goddard, director of the Department of Research at the Training School for Feeble-minded at Vineland, N. J., remarks concerning heredity of feeble-mindedness: “But we now know that sixty-five per cent. of these children have inherited the condition, and that if they grow up and marry they will transmit the same condition to their offspring. Indeed, we know that this class of people is increasing at an enormous rate in every community and unless we do something to stop this great stream of bad protoplasm we shall some day be swamped in a sea of degeneracy.”
E. R. Johnstone, superintendent of the training school at Vineland, N. J., in a recent bulletin remarks concerning feeble-minded and epileptics, “We are now convinced that from sixty to eighty per cent. of the cases are hereditary.”
Again, we find Doctor A. C. Rogers, superintendent of a school for feeble-minded in Minnesota, saying, “We have no survey of mentality in this country except in very small areas, but probably about sixty-five per cent. of the feeble-minded children that we know of are feeble-minded from heredity; that is, they come from families in which there is much feeble-mindedness, usually associated with various neuroses or psychosis. There are about thirty-five per cent. approximately that are acquired cases. These cases develop from various things. Full development may be prevented during gestation, or early childhood, or early adolescence, but these acquired cases are entirely distinct from the hereditary ones.”
In a recent paper Doctor Martin W. Barr, chief physician for the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-minded Children, says: “In my individual study of 4,050 cases of imbecility, I find 2,651, or 65.34 per cent., caused by malign heredities; and of these 1,030, or 25.43 per cent., are due to direct inheritance of idiocy; and 280, or 6.91 per cent., to insanity.” From these figures it will be seen that Doctors Barr, Goddard, Wilmarth, Johnstone and Rogers all agree in their estimates; namely, that two-thirds of our imbeciles are so through inheritance.
Some Results of Non-Restraint of the Feeble-minded.—The following excerpt from a paper by Doctor Barr, is a fair sample of what happens when such defective individuals are not restrained from propagating their kind:
“My own study and observation alone, of over 4,000 degenerates, shows such examples as: A man 38 years of age, the father of 19 defective children, all living, he and his wife both under par mentally; as was another couple, with 9 imbecile children; an idiot woman with 7 idiot children. A forcible instance is that of a man with two daughters and one illegitimate grandchild, all feeble-minded.... I could name a family, one of the proudest in the land, where there are five children, an aunt and two uncles, all feeble-minded.
“Yet another, which in seven generations numbering some 138 individuals, records 10 still-born children (premature births), 16 insane, 7 imbeciles, 3 epileptics and 32 with mental peculiarities so pronounced as to occasion remark. Of the 138 there remain 80 apparently normal, who are nevertheless hopeless slaves of a neurotic heredity, direct or collateral.
“In a study of 15 imbecile girls, 3 were recognized prostitutes, 9 had each 1 illegitimate child (2 being the result of incestuous intercourse with brothers); 1 had 2; 2 epileptics had, the one 3, and the other 4 idiot children.
“Four feeble-minded women had 40 illegitimate children.
“A feeble-minded woman living in an almshouse since early childhood, allowed to go out to service periodically, had given birth to six illegitimate children, all inheriting her defect.