The Kallikak family : a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness / by Henry Herbert Goddard.

  • Goddard, Henry Herbert, 1866-1957.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Kallikak family : a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness / by Henry Herbert Goddard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    laws of inheritance and the ultimate effect of the operation. CONCLUSION AND RESUME The Kallikak family presents a natural experiment in heredity. A young man of good family becomes through two different women the ancestor of two lines of descendants, — the one characterized by thoroughly good, respectable, normal citizenship, with almost no exceptions; the other being equally characterized by mental defect in every generation. This defect was transmitted through the father in the first generation. In later generations, more defect was brought in from other families through marriage. In the last genera- tion it was transmitted through the mother, so that we have here all combinations of transmission, which again proves the truly hereditary character of the de- fect. We find on the good side of the family prominent people in all walks of life and nearly all of the 496 descendants owners of land or proprietors. On the bad side we find paupers, criminals, prostitutes, drunk- ards, and examples of all forms of social pest with which modern society is burdened. From this we conclude that feeble-mindedness is largely responsible for these social sores.