Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/116

106 unconscious perversion of facts, either from the false meanings which, owing to specific views and predilections and fears, are read into them, not only by the laity, but often by the profession, or else from the wrong deductions derived from actual facts clearly understood. Try as one may, it is often most difficult to get a sufficient number of clearly defined facts to enable even the most expert to form a true and comprehensive idea of the case in hand. This leads to the remark that what is now absolutely needed is some form of record-keeping which shall become a general practice on the part of heads of families and their physicians, and which may be handed down from generation to generation; and not only this, but that these shall be so accurately and fully kept that they may be worthy of consideration as the best and in fact the only basis of a scientific generalization in case of mental or moral emergency. That people as a rule would probably resent this, as constituting an undue interference with the sanctity of personal and family rights, while undoubtedly rendering it practically nugatory for the time being, does not in any good sense militate against either the scientific need or the great good which would accrue from the use of such family records faithfully and intelligently kept. It is encouraging to note that already the way for such records is being opened in the demands made by the various questionnaires sent out by Dr. G. Stanley Hall and others who are interested in the scientific study of children. (See various issues of the American Journal of Psychology, and of the Pedagogical Seminary, for pertinent suggestions and results. Also an article by Dr. William H. Thomson, in the Yale Medical Journal for April, 1898.) Much more useful and in general satisfactory would this be than the blind staggering after elusory causation now so universally and yet so futilely pursued.

And the same may be said with reference to statistics as commonly tabulated. These having reference but to the surface showings, the after-the-mischief-is-done results, and so often obtained under misleading constraint or other unfavorable influences, are scarcely capable of even hinting the significance of real conditions, and especially of tendencies that have existed antecedent to the individual breakdown. For instance, such statistics as those compiled by Dr. Wise (see State Hospitals Bulletin, vol. i, page 157), when subjected to the requirements of an accurate causative consideration, easily lend themselves to the criticism made by the author himself, who says, "The careful inquirer can receive no reliable information from the study of insane hospital statistics except the bare