MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 83, 8 December 1913, Page 4

MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

Sir James Chmhton Browne recently maili! i he stalemenl i lull the eliolog\ or causation of mental deficiency is

still obscure, indeterminate, and -urgently in need of investigation, as it is upon ii that any efficacious measures of prevention must be founded. At

the moment ii is the hereditary nature of mental deficiency that is uppermost in the public mnid, ami sanguine hopes were in some, quarters entertained thai the segregation of those afflicted by it might lead to its reducion and ultimate extinction. There can be no doubt thai feeble-minded-nes-s is a recessive character. Careful-ly-collected pedigrees prove that il is strongly inherited, and' that when both parents are feeble-mmcted, all the children are in some way abnormal, and that in feeble-minded stock there is a tendency to epilepsy and to alcoholism. But heredity does not exhaust the matter. If all the feebleminded in England were locked up tomorrow and kept locked up we would very soon again have an abundant crop of idiots and defectives. The recessive character might skip a gen eration, and we could not shut a man

up because his father or his grandfather was weak-minded. There ar< many other potent causes beside? heredity at work in the production oi mental defect. It would almost seen as if the highest intellectual develop ment in parents might sometimes re

suit in mental deficiency in offspring