Heredity and eugenics in relation to insanity / by F.W. Mott.

  • Mott, F. W. (Frederick Walker), 1853-1926.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Heredity and eugenics in relation to insanity / by F.W. Mott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    an extent as the mentally feeble. The progeny begotten of a feeble-minded mother by a drunken father, according to my experience, is much more likely to be born mentally defective or become insane in later life than when both parents are intemperate, but neither of inherent mental defi¬ ciency. I have many pedigrees which seem to indicate that a perfectly sound stock may degenerate from a combination of pathogenic factors, viz., stress of town life, alcoholism, syphilis, and tuberculosis occurring in the progenitors in successive generations. Wage-earning capacity of the masses depends upon two factors, energy and sagacity, and the feeble-minded are usually deficient in both, but their deficiency in energy, physical and mental, is largely due to an inborn deficiency, but not always, or alto¬ gether, for owing to their low wage-earning capacity, the environmental conditions are correspondingly poor, especially is this the case with the denizens of the one-roomed tenements of our great cities. Bad sanitation, insufficient food, air and sunlight, alcoholism, syphilis, tuberculosis, and infectious diseases all conspire together to sap the vital energy of the un¬ employed, the casual labourer, the women, especially mothers, and the children. By no means all these people are of the eugenically unfit; many by improvement of their environment may have that restoration of vital energy which is essential for will power and the exercise of an inborn sagacity which chance, opportunity, or ill fortune has denied them. In proof of this you have only to visit such schools as Shenfield, or even Barnardo’s Homes, to see that environment plays a very important part in the development of energy, sagacity, and character. You cannot make good material out of bad raw material, but fairly good material or even good material may be spoiled by a bad environment. Even an inborn virtue may, by evil surroundings, become the source of the worst vices. The Effects of Poisons, e.g., Alcohol, Syphilis, and Tuberculosis, upon the Germ-plasm. An important racial question is this : Do poisons, such as syphilis, alcohol, and tuberculosis, diminish the vital energy of the male and female germ prior to conjugation and cause pathological variations? It is a known fact that toxins weaken cells, and therefore why not germ-cells? For although the sexual cells are segregated in the body, they are of the body and nourished by the same blood and lympth, and there is consequently reason for supposing that these most potent and pre¬ valent poisons, alcohol, syphilis, and tuberculosis, may, without killing the germ-cells diminish their specific vital energy and thus lead to various patho¬ logical conditions of the body, and especially of the nervous system. There can be no doubt that syphilis of the parents may lead to infantilism in the offspring evidenced by arrest of development of the secondary sexual characters. If syphilis can produce arrest of development of the reproduc¬ tive organs, there is no reason why it should not lead to arrest of develop-