able of the ordinary transactions of life under friendly control, of understanding moral and social abstractions, of working like twothirds of a man; and 25 to 30 per cent. have come nearer and nearer the standard of manhood, till some of them will defy the scrutiny of good judges, when compared with ordinary young men and women.

It will be seen by a study of this report from one even so sanguine as was Seguin that the number of those claimed to be advanced to a condition of normal intelligence and citizenship is extremely limited, if there are any at all.

The statistics of the Royal Albert Asylum, Lancaster, England, show that "10 per cent. of the pupils discharged after seven years training were or had been earning wages, that 5 per cent. were remuneratively employed at home, and 31⁄2 per cent. were reported to be more or less useful to their friends at home, while another 24 per cent. were said to be of little or no use. 29 per cent. had gravitated to workhouses and lunatic asylums; and the remainder, 81⁄2 per cent., had died." Dr. Shuttleworth, in speaking of this report, says: It must not be imagined, however, that even the best of the above were in all respects equal to persons of average intelligence. Some residual peculiarity usually remains to handicap the feeble-minded in the race of life."

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The results reached in American institutions have been practically the same. Dr. Walter E. Fernald, of Massachusetts, in speaking on this subject, says: "Not over 10 or 15 per cent. of our inmates can be made self-supporting, in the sense of going out into the community and securing and retaining a situation, and prudently spending their earnings. With all our training we cannot give our pupils that indispensable something known as good, plain common sense." Dr. Martin W. Barr, of Pennsylvania, says emphatically that "an abnormal can never become a normal child. The best we can hope to do in any case is to arouse dormant faculties, . . . train the child for that life occupation for which he may seem best fitted; . . . but weak will and indolent temperament will forever forbid for him successful competition with normal people."

The results cited do not by any means include all the benefits of the training and education of these children. Previously to the first efforts of Seguin, Wilbur, and Howe, the condition of the feebleminded had been regarded as altogether hopeless. The past sixty

years are filled with proof that their lot, far from being hopeless, is full of promise. The experiences of these years have shown us that most of them can be taught to be cleanly, orderly, and obedient, to dress, undress, feed themselves, and perform other simple duties of life. Bad habits and dispositions can also be corrected and improved; and we have further learned that a favorable mental change almost invariably follows upon a state of physical health brought about by medical attention and treatment, exercise and occupation. And, lastly, these years have shown us how many of these children can be taught nearly all domestic and household duties, simple tasks, farming and gardening, and so, in a measure, be made selfsupporting.

These results of education and training, marvellous as they are in many cases, fall short, as we have seen, of developing that indescribable something which removes the stigma of feeble-mindedness. Far be it, however, from the sentiment of this report to disparage in the least the value of the education and training of these children. Our duty on this line we think but begun. Each succeeding year unfolds to us new methods of instruction, new means of training, and new discoveries in their medical care and treatment, until we feel sanguine that their state will yet be much further advanced.

Granting, however, that these children cannot be so educated and trained as to fully or properly care for themselves without supervision, what is to be their future, and what the future of those yet untrained and abroad in every community? Their number, now over one hundred thousand in this country, precludes the hope of securing safe and watchful tutelage for those dismissed after terms of training; and yet, left to their present environment and lack of control, we see among them imbecile girls and women everywhere an easy prey to the wiles and lust of brutal men, and becoming mothers of children like themselves. The abandonment of the original hope of elevating these children to a normal mental and moral standard, and an appall ing increase in the ranks of the feeble-minded and the insane, the criminal and the pauper, have within recent years been more and more strongly attracting our attention to the possible prevention of feeble-mindedness; and this question, in our judgment, takes precedence to-day over all others connected with this philanthropic body in demanding a speedy solution.

This question takes its importance primarily from the fact that the

ranks of the feeble-minded are being constantly multiplied by the feeble-minded, and, secondly, by the fact that they are also prolific in the production of crime, pauperism, illegitimacy, prostitution, insanity, and epilepsy. In 1850 there were reported in the United States The number census 9,149 idiots. The census of 1890 gives 95,571. of feeble-minded to one million of population in 1850 was 681. In 1890 it was 1,526. In other words, there has been, in forty years, Of this an increase in round numbers from 10,000 to 100,000. number, only about 7,000 are provided for in public institutions especially designed for them. The fact that there has been such an increase in their number, and that so many are unprotected and unprovided for, is sufficiently deplorable in itself; but even more so is the fact that the existence of so many feeble-minded establishes a centre from which emanates an almost endless chain of evil. These 95,000 uncared for we find to be not only a burden to their relatives and friends, but also a burden and menace to the public by their reproduction of other mental weakness,- insanity, epilepsy, pauperism, illegitimacy, and every form of degeneracy.

In June, 1890, there were reported in the United States 106,000 insane, 40,000 deaf and dumb, 50,000 blind in both eyes, 93,000 blind in one eye, 73,000 paupers in the almshouses, and between 90,000 and 100,000 tramps. How many of these insane, deaf-mutes, blind, paupers, and tramps, not to mention the criminal and other degenerates, are either mentally feeble or the progeny of feebleminded parents? The reports of the infamous Juke family, of "Margaret, the Mother of Criminals," and of "The Tribe of Ishmael," with which you are all familiar, answer this question pointedly, their originally feeble-minded parentage resulting in pauperism, blindness, prostitution, crime, and degeneracy to an appalling extent.

As has been stated, we have in this country an army of from 90,000 to 100,000 tramps. The late Dr. Isaac N. Kerlin, in speaking of moral imbecility, once stated that he had "examined and interrogated many tramps, and was ready to aver that the tramp is a low, cunning imbecile." We know not how many prostitutes our country harbors, but how much more even would they become objects of our pity, were we to know the number of them in whom mental weakness was the cause of their loathsome condition, the sinned against rather than the sinner! Mr. Howard Edwards, a philanthropist of Philadelphia, who has spent many years in the rescue of fallen women,

once stated that he felt "the cause of prostitution to be mainly mental and moral instability or imbecility, and not downright wantonness."

And so, too, with the criminal; for Mr. Z. R. Brockway, of the Elmira Reformatory, reports, in 1,463 examinations, 1,082 as "having absolutely no moral sense." And he gives it as his opinion that "something that may be called imbecility lies at the foundation of a vast amount of crime."

What, then, in other words, is the panorama that confronts us? Not alone an appalling number of unfortunates demanding our sympathy and care, but, in addition to that, a mighty host of defectives, without custody or proper protection, procreating others of their kind, and constantly increasing the ranks of every form of degeneracy.

This condition of affairs, so easily related, we find beset with many difficulties in the way of its solution. The uncharity of awaiting the self-extirpation of this class, and so a "survival of the fittest," far from receiving consideration in this Conference, would be a parody on its name. It is obvious, then, that, if we do not lend ourselves to this unfeeling disregard of wretchedness, something in the nature of the prevention of its furtherance is our line of duty,- a duty of paramount importance to the welfare of society and the State.

The literal stamping out of imbecility we all recognize as impossible, such a thing being precluded by the nature of its origin,— an array of mental feebleness at once confronting us, whose causes are so remote, uncertain, indirect, and so interwoven one with another as to make such a task impossible.

The accomplishment of any practical benefit in the line of preven tion of feeble-mindedness can only follow upon a deeper study into its causation and a wider public dissemination of our knowledge. Of the many diverse and complicated causes of feeble-mindedness, none is so important for our consideration as that of heredity.

A study of the records of our institutions will convince even the sceptic that direct heredity is one of the greatest sources, if not the greatest source, of supply to this increasing number of degenerates.

In speaking on this subject, Ribot, in his work upon "Heredity." says: "All forms of mental activity are transmissible,- instincts, perceptive faculties, imagination, aptitude for the fine arts, reason, aptitude for science and abstract duties, sentiments, passions, force of character. Nor are the morbid forms less transmissible than the

normal, as we have seen in the case of insanity, hallucination, and idiocy."

Grouped under the head of heredity, we find intemperance, consanguinity, phthisis, general neuroses, insanity, epilepsy, and idiocy. Let us consider some of these various causes briefly, others more at length.

Our statistics show that intemperance on the part of one parent or both occurs so frequently that at a glance, if considered alone, it might be thought a potent cause of idiocy. But intemperance, like many other causes, is often only an evidence of a weakness in the individual, and is really but the manifestation of some physical or psychical decadence in the person himself or in his ancestry. While we believe that intemperance per se in the father or mother may, and sometimes does, result in the propagation of idiotic children, yet the tendency to idiocy is more intensified when the intemperance is associated with other weakness, mental, moral, or physical.

In inquiring into the question of hereditary causes, unless the whole family history is positively known, some allowance must always be made for the disposition on the part of friends to conceal some family defects. There are few persons who cannot point, if they choose, to some stain on their family history,- something of which they are not proud, and which they prefer to keep in the background. This is especially true in families where feeble-mindedness shows itself. The parents themselves do not like to feel or acknowledge that they are in any way the offspring of defective stock or poor blood. The saying, "There's a black sheep in every fold," is often applied to families, and, in its broadest sense, is as often a pertinent application. Another familiar saying, “Like father, like son," is still further exemplified by the fact that many persons who marry are unfit to do so. By this, I do not refer altogether to the existence of neurotic disorders and the insane tendency, but to a condition bordering on imbecility. One frequently sees such persons who are married; and in many of the applications received at the Syracuse Institution it is stated, of the father or mother or both, that they are weak-minded or below the standard of ordinary intelligence. When the father or mother is little better than an imbecile, it is not to be wondered at that the child is idiotic or imbecile. Moreover, if such an one be, in a measure, physically degenerate or scrofulous or deformed or intemperate, an habitual criminal or morally polluted, what can be expected of such a parent other than idiotic offspring?