That the imbecile cannot work in competition with the normal man is self-evident. An intelligent State policy demands that he shall be housed, fed, nursed, clothed, and taught as far as may be ; and, when we shall have put him in the way of following the common laws of order and decency, we have started him on the up-grade. Even the simplest custodial care is a great step in advance of the neglect of former years. We have reached our sober second thought for the imbecile. The plain facts in the case do not warrant us in claiming for him the high degree of attainment our early enthusiasm led us to hope for. My own conviction is that, as time goes on, we shall do less in the school-room and more in the workshop and field. Institutions we must have; and in them we must be able to combine minimum of cost with maximum of care, since all placing-out systems are valueless in this work. All who have had experience in finding homes for children know that the slightest physical defect is a great detriment, even when there is perfect mental balance. Nothing is truer than that we all judge and are influenced by appearances. Consider, then, the difficulties when to the physical defect almost universal in the imbecile there are added the mental peculiarities which set him apart from his fellows. There is no remedy for this. No logic, no appeal to sentiment, charity, or humanity, will avail with the mass of people. It is a state of affairs we must accept and provide for. Nobody wants the imbecile, not even those who are bound most closely to him by ties of blood. He is an innocent element of disorder everywhere, outside of associations with his own kind. Defenceless, an easy victim to injustice and neglect, his very weakness appeals to the best that lies in humanity. That is why it is possible to secure for him the high order of individual teaching necessary and possible for each case, no matter how large the institution. Every nstitution for the feeble-minded stands as an object-lesson in adanced civilization. The pauper can sometimes be made self-suporting, the incorrigible, so called, may sometimes be given a new art, the insane have a chance of recovery. Every other class of deendent and delinquent has one or more chances of altering his contion. The feeble-minded alone is the exception. He, unfortutely, is handicapped from the cradle to the grave. When you ve done your very best for him, his highest attainment is to bene what some one has called "two-thirds of a man." The ques that we must face in view of the terrible yearly increase of this class is not, What shall we do with this fraction of humanity, but How shall we get rid of it? How shall we cut off the supply? That insanity, pauperism, and crime produce imbecility we know. That imbecility produces these in turn we are beginning to find out. That heredity is a direct cause of imbecility no one denies who has given the problem intelligent study. How shall we wipe out heredity? For the so-called wards of the State, those who are already in institutions, the answer is comparatively easy. State care for a lifetime is the simplest, most civilized and economical solution of the problem. In the case of these we can consider that the remedy lies in our own hands. But, in face of the fact that there are at least one hundred thousand feeble-minded persons of various ages and conditions who are outside of the direct restraining influences of an institution, it is clear no half-way measures will prevent the increase of this number. What is considered the sacred law of individual right places it within the power of a large per cent. of these to marry, and inevitably to reproduce their kind. If we are to strike a telling blow in the interests of prevention, we must influence public sentiment and legislation for the sake of morality and permanent good. In effect, according to the statute, we are all wards of the State under a certain age. However bright mentally or strong physically, we can neither make a will, convey property, nor marry except through the agency and written consent of a parent or guardian. Without the said consent the registrar who issues a certificate of marriage to a minor is subjected to a heavy penalty. Now, if the State can enact such laws for the protection of its normal citizens, what shall hinder its placing the age limit of the feeble-minded at that unattainable period for them which is commonly called years of discretion? I use the term "feeble-minded" in its broadest sense. Under that head will come the epileptic, incorrigible, or moral imbecile, and the insane, as well as the idiot and imbecile of the ordinary type. I am well aware that this suggestion carried out would strike a blow directly at the root of what is called the law of individual right, but I claim that the mentally unfit have no individual right to reproduce themselves. Being mentally unfit, we cannot expect the moral side of the case to appeal to any one of them. We cannot instil into the feeble-minded any sense of responsibility for bringing either a legitimate or an illegitimate child into the world. They are and must remain illegitimate parents of illegitimate children from first to last. That which they will not, cannot, do for themselves, the law of the land must do for them. The sane, normal, every-day people of this country must have a chance. As Professor Brewer of Yale said at the New Haven Conference a few years ago, thanks to modern science, charity, and humanity, we are saving everything that is unfit; and it is the greatest test that can be brought to bear upon our civilization. Once here, save them we must, for humanity's sake; but, as far as we can, let us cut off the supply at the fountain-head. In the words of Dr. Maudsley, "It is certain that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico-printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complex that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are, and by what laws they work." That which I advocate could never become what is called a federal law. Perhaps "never" is a strong word; but, at the least calcula. tion, it would take years to bring it about, and we cannot afford to wait. With an annual increase of over two thousand of the feebleminded alone, we absolutely cannot afford to wait. But let each State enact its own law. We move slowly in conservative Connecticut, but we have had upon the statute books the past three years the following prohibitory law: AN ACT CONCERNING CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. SECTION 1. No man and woman, either of whom is epileptic, imbecile, or feebleminded, shall intermarry or live together as husband and wife when the woman is under forty-five years of age. Any person violating, or attempting to violate, any of the provisions of this section, shall be imprisoned in the State prison not less than three years. SECT. 2. Any selectman, or any other person who shall advise, aid, abet, cause, or assist in procuring, or countenance any violation of section one of this act, or the marriage of any pauper when the woman in such marriage is under forty-five years of age, shall be fined not less than one thousand dollars or imprisoned not less than one year or both. SECT. 3. Every man who shall carnally know any female under the age of forty-five years who is epileptic, imbecile, feeble-minded, or a pauper, shall be imprisoned in the State prison not less than three years. Every man, who is epilep tic, who shall carnally know any female under the age of forty-five years, and every female under the age of forty-five years who shall consent to be carnally known by any man who is epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded, shall be imprisoned in the State prison not less than three years. Approved July 4, 1895. Every man here, every member of this Conference, every State Board of Charity, can influence legislation in this matter. Science is slow. To become science, detail must, above everything else, be accurate. To prove every step takes time. Nothing is harder to get at than truth in the history of cases, as every medical superintendent of an institution for the idiot and imbecile can testify. This will exist so long as imbecility is looked upon as a disgrace instead of a misfortune. A physical or mental imperfection is, in the popular mind, a greater affliction than a moral one. The statement that we are all sinners we accept pretty passively. The statement that we are all feeble in mind because of that, or feeble in will, even in the least degree, we should resent to a man. This universal feeling acts against making rapid progress in getting at the hidden causes of imbecility. We can never know accurately all the causes which result in the production of defective human beings. The mystery of life is too great. There is too much theory to overcome; but, when we do feel firm ground under our feet, we must advance. When we can prove, as we have, that a certain definite per cent. of the histories of children received into the institutions for the feeble-minded show epilepsy as a cause or as a complication, and that hitherto we have placed no legal obstacle in the way of repeating these conditions, our way is clear in this direction at least. Morally, every citizen is responsible for the legal increase of imbecility in his own community. Morally, he is responsible for the increase of illegitimate imbecility in his own community. Every man is his brother's keeper to this extent. In the face of the terrible increase of this class, by what we may call known methods, every one of us must strike a blow for prevention. At least, let us wipe out the stain of legalizing the production of idiocy, imbecility, insanity, and crime. X. The Defective and Dependent Classes. THE REMEDIAL, ECONOMIC, AND ETHICAL BY WILLIAM P. SPRATLING, M.D., MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT, CRAIG COLONY, SONY EA, NEW YORK. At the last meeting of this association, held a year ago in Toronto, it was my pleasure to present a paper on the education of the epileptic, with especial reference to the value of the industrial forms of education. In that paper I endeavored to show the value to the epileptic of systematic employment along proper lines. I endeavored to show how faithfully all the avenues of occupation, when of the proper sort and used as educational agencies, would inevitably lead to the moral and physical improvement, and often to the absolute cure of the disease, or condition,- whichever you choose to call it, from which the epileptic suffers. I spoke for the industrial as against all other forms of education for the epileptic, not failing, however, to recognize the necessity for some schooling for this class directed chiefly to the cultivation of the purely intellectual forces. The plea for the industrial education of the defective classes was based upon a knowledge of its value for the epileptic,- a knowledge that came from experience that had demonstrated beyond question what such an education could do and what it had done; and, while the argument in favor of such an education was based primarily upon the laws of physiology, of practical ethics, and of sound hygiene, its economic feature was incidentally touched upon. But that feature alone possesses no merit in comparison with its broader, deeper, more vital and uplifting influences that are made |