Eugenics in race and state.

  • International Congress of Eugenics
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Eugenics in race and state. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    360/534 (page 344)
    344 WILLIAM s. SADLER Seventy-eight per cent of our replies indicate a belief that certain forms of backwardness are more likely due to endocrine disturbances than to de¬ fective germ-plasm. Only 1 per cent answer this question in the negative, while 21 per cent are noncommittal or offer otherwise unsatisfactory answers. Many of the physicians and some of the biologists replying are of the opin¬ ion that it is more or less impossible to distinguish between these two pos¬ sible causes of defectiveness. Others feel that the retards and subnormals who develop up to a certain point, are abnormal more largely as the result of exclusive defect of the germ-plasm, while some of the educators seem to lean toward the opinion that those dullards or backward children who do not stop definitely at a certain point in their mental progress, but who are able to go on farther in school—though with greater difficulty—it is their belief that in the case of these so-called backward children the endocrine system is more largely at fault, and that the backwardness is not due wholly to hereditary defect in the parental germ-plasm. McCord and Haynes are inclined to believe that endocrinopathies arising from environmental conditions—scarlet fever, syphilis, etc.,—may recur in the offspring. Such a belief might offer in its support Guyer's more recent experiments, suggesting that the internal secretory system may be a factor, after all, in modifying the mechanism of inheritance; and if this is true such a fact would be of far reaching significance to both medicine and practical eugenics. It should be noted in this connection that McCord has demon¬ strated a functioning of the pituitary and suprarenal glands within the second month of fetal life, and maintains that development of these fetal endocrine glands is inñuenced by the glandular system of the mother. He demonstrated that thyroid gland tissue added to the living water of frog tadpoles brought about the transformation from the tadpole stage in one week, instead of three to five months, whereas thymus tissue added to the living water of tadpoles retards the differentiation. One-fifth (21.1 per cent) of 1134 feebleminded inmates examined in the Michigan Home and Training School presented characteristics of glandular defects, and led to the conclusion that heredity was the foremost factor in their etiology. It was believed that while the glandular disturbance may increase the defect, more often the co-existing feeblemindedness and glandu¬ lar defect are the outcome of the common hereditary cause. Question 4. Do you think Mongolian idiocy is entirely due to thyroid or endocrine disturbance, and not also to defective germ-plasm? Ten per cent of the authorities consulted believe that Mongolian idiocy is entirely due to thyroid or other endocrine disturbance; 27 per cent think not; 63 per cent failed to express an opinion.