Heredity Of Feeble Mindedness

The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness is a work by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. It serves as a case study for a range of mental incapacities involving logical disability, learning disabilities, and mental illness.

"On September 15, 1906, the Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children at Vineland, New Jersey, opened a laboratory and a Department of Research for the study of feeble-mindedness. A beginning was made in studying the mental condition of the children who lived in the Institution, with a view to determining the mental and physical peculiarities of the different grades and types, to getting an accurate record of what deficiencies each child had and what he was capable of doing, with the hope that in time these records could be correlated with the condition of the nervous system of the child, if he should die while in the Institution and an autopsy should be allowed. As soon as possible after the beginning of this work, a definite start was made toward determining the cause of feeble-mindedness. After some preliminary work, it was concluded that the only way to get the information needed was by sending trained workers to the homes of the children, to learn by careful and wise questioning the facts that could be obtained. It was a great surprise to us to discover so much mental defect in the families of so many of these children. The results of the study of more than 300 families will soon be published, showing that about 65 per cent of these children have the hereditary taint. The present study of the Kallikak family is a genuine story of real people. The name is, of course, fictitious, as are all of the names throughout the story. The results here presented come after two years of constant work, investigating the conditions of this family. To the scientific reader we would say that the data here presented are, we believe, accurate to a high degree. It is true that we have made rather dogmatic statements and have drawn conclusions that do not seem scientifically warranted from the data. We have done this because it seems necessary to make these statements and conclusions for the benefit of the lay reader, and it was impossible to present in this book all of the data that would substantiate them. We have, as a matter of fact, drawn upon the material which is soon to be presented in a larger book. The reference to Mendelism is an illustration of what we mean"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Excerpt from Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness Recognizing the difficulty of preventing these inaccurate state ments, it was decided to publish a new blank which should be called the After-admission Blank, containing very careful, detailed ques tions about the relatives of the child. This blank was sent to all parents and physicians, with a little note urging them for the sake of the child to tell all they possibly could about the child's relatives, ' their condition, any diseases they had had, any habits, such as alcoholism, any insanity or the like which had occurred in the family. It was expected that this would only be preliminary to more detailed and careful work later. We were, however, greatly surprised at the amount of information received, which has since been proved to be generally very accurate. Upon the basis of this information, we prepared charts of the children, which were truly remarkable in what they revealed as to the etiology of feeble - mindedness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Feeble-Mindedness Its Causes and Consequences This book is in the nature of a report on work done at the Vineland Research Laboratory during the past five years in an attempt to discover the causes of the feeble-mindedness of the children in the Institution. No attempt has been made to treat exhaustively any of the topics that have come up for con sideration. The report is far from complete. Our cases are still being studied and the data are so incomplete in many ways that one is tempted to withhold publication until the results of other studies now in progress could be added. Such a procedure would have given a more satisfactory product. But in view of the great popular interest in these topics and the demand for informa tion, we have put aside personal preferences and prepared what data we had in as available form as we could. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Kallikak Family a Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness On September 15, 1906, the Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children at Vineland, New Jersey, opened a laboratory and a Department of Research for the study of feeble-mindedness. A beginning was made in studying the mental condition of the children who lived in the Institution, with a view to determining the mental and physical peculiarities of the different grades and types, to getting an accurate record of what deficiencies each child had and what he was capable of doing, with the hope that in time these records could be correlated with the condition of the nervous system of the child, if he should die while in the Institution and an autopsy should be allowed. As soon as possible after the beginning of this work, a definite start was made toward determining the cause of feeble-mindedness. After some preliminary work, it was concluded that the only way to get the information needed was by sending trained workers to the homes of the children, to learn by careful and wise questioning the facts that could be obtained. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.