THE FEEBLE-MINDED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 7

THE FEEBLE-MINDED.

QUESTION OF TREATMENT,

LONDON, July 29.

Professor Berry, chairman of the Mental Deficiency Committee of the B.M.A. attached great importance at the Centenary Congress to the matter of speech acquisition in the detection of deficiency. If a child's capacity to speak were several years late, he said, it might bo a reasonably certain conclusion that the child was going to be a pronounced defective. Parents should not >be told that a child would improve. Children grow into deficiency, and not out of it.

Bad language, ho said, was not a sign of deficiency; nevertheless, it showed up in a great many of the feeble-minded. He also stressed the importance of early diagnosis of deficiency, to do which, no one was better qualified than the practising physician.

Referring to the careful sheltering and medical treatment of defectives, Professor Berry said he was' inclined to wonder whether democracy was not backing the wrong horso in assisting the unfit instead of the fit. He added that sterilisation was now being considered by a Government committee, and, therefore, was sub judice.

Sir Henry Brackenbury, a member of the Mental Defectives' Committee, said, during the discussion, that, in his opinion, the majority of the evil-minded behaved, themselves socially. and sexually as well as the average citizens.

U.S.A. AND CRIME. "MOST LAWLESS NATION." ' SAN FRANCISCO, July 29. "We have become the most lawless and most law-ridden nation in the world," said a resolution by a conference of judges of the Pacific coast States. "Crime in the United States is costing £100,000,000 annually, more than the total cost of all orphanages, asylums, schools, churches, and charities. Britain has simplified her laws and conquered her criminals. We retain a system under which our criminals conquer us," said the judges. They urged whipping for felons as the only real deterrent in many classes of crime. I