Sterilization for human betterment : a summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929 / by E.S. Gosney ... and Paul Popenoe.

  • Gosney, E. S. (Ezra Seymour), 1855-1942.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Sterilization for human betterment : a summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929 / by E.S. Gosney ... and Paul Popenoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE PROBLEM selves not much affected mentally, but are yet carriers of a heritage that may lead to mental disease in their descendants, is probably much greater than is the number of those who are them¬ selves affected. Few if any of these carriers can be identified beyond doubt, but the number is demonstrably large; they are spreading defective germ plasm continually through the sound part of the community, and many of them can be pointed out with probable accuracy through a study of their ancestry. MENTAL DEFECTIVES When one turns to the mental defectives, the situation is no more reassuring. These are the people whose minds have not developed in the normal way. The mentally diseased person (in¬ sane) has at some time had a better mind which has broken down under strain. The mentally defective (feeble-minded) person was defective from birth or early childhood. It is customary to measure the intellect by standard tests such as the Binet, and to express the result in the form of an Intelligence Quotient (I. Q.), which is the ratio of the mental age to the chronological age. Thus a ten-year-old child who passes only the tests that the ordinary five- year-old can pass has a mental age of five years, [7]