INSANITY AND GENIUS

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 July 1933, Page 2

INSANITY AND GENIUS

BAD TEETH BAR TO MARRIAGE ? LONDON, June 8. Dentists attending the meeting of the British Dental Association’s conference at Leicester, yesterday, took part in a lively discussion on the ralationship of genius to insanity, the problem of whether people with certain diseases should have children, and the advice of a profesisonal man should give in certain cases. Col. C. J. Bond raised a- series of questions by his paper, which one speaker described as “deliberately provocative.” on dental, national and racial health. He discussed voluntary sterilisation in connection with sufferers from diabetes, thyroid deficiency, tuberculosis, certain eye troubles, mental defect and other things. Mr. H. T. Roper-Hall, of Birmingham, said he was sure Col. Bond was not so pessimistic as he made out. “Wo should not deny the joys of parenthood to people not definitely mentally defective,” said Mr. RoperHall. “Are we to prevent our patients from marrying and having children because their offspring may have bad teeth? “I think that we are going to make a great mistake if we are going to apply strict science to persons. People are very different from test tubes. (Cheers). “Does Dr. Bond want a beefy race, excellent on the river or an intellectual race? Possibly two of the most progressive races at the present time, the Germans and the Japs, are conspicuous for the number of their people wearing glasses. What would happen to some of the geniuses of the past if Col. Bond’s theories had been put into force strictly?”

KEATS AND BACH. “I am prepared fully to admit,” said Col. Bond, “that a careful search into the history of families of genius does show a certain association between genius and instability, in nervous organisation in other members of those families, amounting in a number of cases to insanity. _ “It is true that Keats died from tuberculosis. Now take that great musical family, the Bachs, For five generations, from Sebastian downwards, you had such a strain of genius, but they were not mentally defective people, but of good, sound mental inheritance. “It. is not in the mentally deetetive families, but in the over-developed, excitable families of nervous instability that you may find genius. By dealing adequately with mental defect fives there is no real danger that you will cut off the supply of genius.” Dr. E. W. Fish, of London, said: l do not think that anybody is going to give up his best girl so that his children shall have better teeth.” (Cheers). Dr Fish asked whether a girl with a congenital cleft palate should have children. Col. Bond referred to what could be done by remedial measures and education in such cases, but said our attitude should be one of care. “If a daughter of mine with a marked congenial deformity was marrying,” he said, “I should say, ‘Have one child and see how you get on. If it is healthy and normal, go forward; it not, stop.’ ”