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.

    475/534 (page 459)
    DISCUSSIONS 459 from relatives, and social workers supplement the histories by field studies. All the reac¬ tions of the patient are considered and temperamental abnormalities are classified accord¬ ing to a definite scheme laid down by the Commission. There are many grades between the normal and the psychopathic; some are seclusive; some, over-active; some, unstable or paranoic. We try to separate the different classes and to determine their relation to the various forms of mental disease. SOME LIMITATIONS OF PRESENT THEORIES M. P. E. Groszmann R. H. Johnson: I think that the author has been unfortunate in resting confidence in the results of Redfield. It seems to me that those conclusions are vitiated in so far as they are derived from the study of animals by the fact that in registered and high scoring animals the older sires are on the whole superior to the younger sires. When a sire has been used and found ineffective, his use is discontinued, whereas a successful sire is used for many years. In consequence, there is a superiority in the older sires partly as a result of selection. In the case of manj I believe the results are somewhat vitiated owing to the fact that we have a longer generation in superior stocks from causes other than those to which Redfield ascribed them. In the superior stocks, we are getting retarded marriages and late child-births because of greater longevity. It therefore foUows that in superior stocks there are more children born late in life than in inferior stocks. In this way Redfield has been led astray. Judge Olson: The paper just read suggests the thought to me that not all of those who work with the Binet-Simon scale are competent to use it. Not all such workers are standardized. During the war many such people were working with this scale and the results secured are not dependable. When such workers are standardized the results secured by different workers or by the same worker at different times are almost iden¬ tical. The total mental age varies but very little. I saw an illustration of that in our Laboratory. One boy was rated at eleven years of age by Mrs. Hickson, who has charge of this work under her husband, the Director. She taught the scale to another worker, who examined this same boy two years later and got the same resvilt—eleven years. This worker taught her father the same methods she had learned, and two years later the father examined this boy with the same result—eleven years, identical with the other two independent demonstrators. Not only were many of the Binet-Simon workers during the war not standardized, but a great many physicians employed as alienists did not recognize emotional defects. They understood intellectual but not emotional defects. I visited General Crowder during the war and at his request stepped into the department, where adjutant generals were reviewing sentences for crime in the army in this country and in France. It was quite noticeable that dementia praecox was not generally recognized. Later I met Doctor Gorgas, and mentioned the fact to him. Dr. Gorgas determined to open a clinic under Dr. Hickson in Chicago, and under Dr. Southard at Boston, for physicians working with the Army, and he asked me to notify him upon his return from Europe, where he was then about to go, when we would be ready for him to give such clinics. We offered him a court-room, where we could accommodate seventy-five to one