Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/347

 CONCERNING A FORM OF DEGENERACY 329

mothers of illegitimate children, so common in our poorhouses ; many of the shiftless poor, ever on the verge of pauperism and often stepping over into it ; some of the blind, some deaf-mutes, some consumptives. All these classes in varying degree, with others not mentioned, are related as being effects of the one cause — which itself is the summing up of many causes — degen- eracy.

Carefully excepting those imbeciles and idiots whose defect has some traumatic origin, is the result of disease, or has some other accidental cause — and these are by no means few — we find that the idiots of various types with whom we have to deal in this paper not only sustain a general relation to the other classes enumerated above as degenerates, but very close relations of blood are often found between them and individuals of other types of degeneracy. They themselves often belong to two classes, as idiotic and paralytic, idiotic and mute, or epileptic, or hysterical. Especially close and frequent are the relations between idiocy, epilepsy, insanity, and paralysis, and between all these and tuberculosis. The classification of a mentally defective person as a terminal dement, or a low-grade idiot, is often impos- sible without knowing the history of the case. Hysteria and paranoia present some identical symptoms. Epilepsy may coexist with idiocy or result in insanity. The dividing line between imbecility and criminality is often indistinguishable. Several of these types frequently coexist in the same family, the hereditary taint taking one form or the other, as circum- stances may determine.

Here are a number of instances taken from the records of one state school for the feeble-minded illustrating the class of relationships referred to above :

A. and O. C. Brothers, middle-grade imbeciles. Father a feeble- minded drunkard. Mother said to be feeble-minded. The boys came from the poorhouse.

E. B. Low-grade idiot girl. A mingled family history, on both

parental sides, of insanity, epilepsy, consumption, neuralgia, scrofula, and deaf-mutism.

L. T. A cretinoid, dwarf, mute idiot. One sister also cretinoid and

mute, and one brother mute, but intelligent, who afterward died of consump-