MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20302, 30 July 1931, Page 13

MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

TO Tli'ie EDITOR or THK PRKSB. Sir,—Your loader this morning, "Mental Deficiency," calls for thought. Yon cite that An English prison doctor twenty-three years ago deposed that 40 per"cent, of the boys at his prison, I'cntonville, were feeble-minded, and that other medical officers stated that a firth of the entire English prison population were mentally abnormal, ; ,Uo, that nil American doctor twentyone venns ago reported to the authorities ' at New York that tho feebleminded were a menace to the civilisation <>l their day, u contention apparently borne out by the certified condition of the American troops dint went to the 'war seven years lawPlease read with this tho report ot, bir George Ne.wman, Chief Medical Ministry of Health, London, only four vtars ago. He says that in England and Wales-there are a million cbilcircn ui school age so mentally detective or diseased th,at they could not receive reasonable benefit from the State education open, to ■them,' Are the sources of your optimistic conclusions up-to-doto? , , , Again, please relate your facts ana Sir George Newman's facts for England and Wales with Mrs T. E. fay lor's facts for New Zealand, as presented in your report this morning; ot the annual meeting of the Mothers

Union. Si:.; says there are 700G children here in tho charge of the Child Welfare Since there are also u"327 children in our orphanages and other public institutions, cshe sav* that nearly 13,000 New Zealand children are without homes. We take it this startling result is not coincident mth orphanhood alone, but points to iiiital conditions usually linked with i eehi e-1 ni 11 <J et! ri ess.

I thank you. by the v/av, for reminding us that an Act bearing on this problem was passed in this eountrv in reeent years, following tho startling report of the Commission on Feeblemindedness and Mental Deficiency )-•- sued some Jive years ago. So 'little has come 01 it that Jen- of us remember it.

Tins list of facts calls for consideration. More, they call for that correlation that must precede effective action. My point is that American and Scandinavian experts have been able so to relate them, in England. On Sir George Newman's evidence and tho gaps not only in your leader but in tho comforting reports you cite or infer, there is no evidence of this selection' And yet tliey not only can bo related but must be related if England and New Zealand are vitally to stand. _ This is how Scandinavia relates similar findings over a long period of years. Dr. Mjoen, of Norway, reported fas quoted in the "British Journal of Inebriety") that when Norway gave her people leave to distil for themselves in .1810, the number of Norwegian feeble-minded increased more than 100 per cent. "The enormous increase of feeble-minded came and went with brandy." Also the (British) Medical Kesearftli Council reported in 192-J: "It seems beyond doubt that this influence of alcohol on the germ-plasm is transmitted by heredity to future generations not exposed to alcohol." It is nice to be optimistic with tho British optimists you quote, even :if Sir George Newman is without our own pessimistic company in this matter. But history indicates again and again the results of national inability to relate essential facts,'a state to which ostriches are proverbially prone.— Yours, etc.,

•I 1> : *1 K MAj i\ Ar. July 29tli. ItC.I.