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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    WHAT IT MEANS The foregoing charts and text tell a story as instructive as it is amazing. We have here a family of good Eng- lish blood of the middle class, settling upon the original land purchased from the proprietors of the state in Colonial times, and throughout four generations main- taining a reputation for honor and respectability of which they are justly proud. Then a scion of this fam- ily, in an unguarded moment, steps aside from the paths of rectitude and with the help of a feeble-minded girl, starts a line of mental defectives that is truly appalling. After this mistake, he returns to the tradi- tions of his family, marries a woman of his own quality, and through her carries on a line of respectability equal to that of his ancestors. We thus have two series from two different mothers but the same father. These extend for six generations. Both lines live out their lives in practically the same region and in the same environment, except in so far as they themselves, because of their different characters, changed that environment. Indeed, so close are they