What to do with the sub-normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What to do with the sub-normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Moreover, many a child suffers in its mental de- velopment through physical defects, hereditary or acquired that are easily, remediable. Such rem- ediable conditions will naturally, be given full consideration in the present monograph. The word subnormal in its widest implications would of course include all types of defective chil- dren, including the out and out imbecile. But in the present case we shall not interpret the word quite so liberally. We are concerned chiefly with the child that differs but little from the normal; in particular with the child that is normal in many respects, but which has the misfortune to be sub- normal as to one trait or another which handicaps it seriously in competition with the altogether normal child. _ Congenital imbecility is, fortunately, a rela- tivelyrarephenomenon. Intheaggregate, tobesure, there are many thousands of imbeciles in the com- munity, but they constitute, after all, only a hand- ful in comparison with the vast coteries of slightly subnormal children. Congenital imbecility, is with rare exception, due to heredity. We have had occasion to refer to its causation in earlier monographs of this series. We have seen that feeble-mindedness is to be regarded as a recessive trait, which is likely to reappear in about one in four of the progeny when two persons both of [2 |] \ ae
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