Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A - DNA Patent Database ...

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THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE’S WORK. 27 The first group of psychoses above named is called functional because, if lesions accompany these mental disorders, they have not yet been discovered by the pathologist but, if the theory that every psychoses is based upon a neurosis becomes established, then the sharp line of demarcation between the organic and the functional psychoses disappears and, rather, one end of the scale represents the psychoses accompanied by gross lesions and the other that accompanied by the more minute lesions. Dr. Wm. A. White, in his book above referred to (Outline of Psychiatry), says: * * * Mental processes, from their incidence in sensations to the release of the motor responses constituting conduct, are conceived to have as their physical substratum a continuous neural process. The process, although differently named in different parts of its course for convenience of designation, is a continuous one. * * * The standpoint of this new-psychology is distinctly different from the standpoint of a few years ago. Until its development the attitude of the psychiatrist was that of the systematic biologist classifying the several cases into families, genera, species, but classifying upon the basis of the obvious symptoms only. The keynote of the new standpoint is its distinctly individual- istic trend. * * * The so-called clinical types are not clean-cut entities, but are only groups of symptoms, which either seem to occur more frequently in combination or else have been more definitely and clearly seen because of that combination. In fact types as such may be said to be in the minority. The great mass of cases seen are combinations more or less intermediate in character. The conception of types in order to be accurate must be from a broadly biological viewpoint. Types are like species. They have innumerable transition and intermediate forms. * * * Insanity, therefore, is not a disease; it is rather a class of disorders, which tend to arrange themselves with greater or less dis- tinctiveness into groups of reaction types. In relation to practical eugenics a specific psychosis may be directly inherited as such, in which case the disease will appear in due onto- genetic sequence. Or its diathesis only may be transmitted. In some types, such as chronic alcoholism and paresis, heredity appears to be the foundation factor, but the poisons respectively of alcohol and of treponema pallidum must conspire with this defective background in order to produce the disease. So in the group of so-called functional psychoses there may be either a weak or strong diathesis—the one requiring a relatively great stress and the other a relatively little stress to bring on the ailment. To the extent that a given strain possesses a hereditary constitutional make-up liable to display a psychosis under anything less than an extraordinary formidable stress of circumstances, there exists in such strain a cacogenic variety of the human race. As in the case of the feeble-minded and criminalistic, the person- ality of the individual is subject to great variation. It appears that practically every normal function is susceptible of disorder and the
28 EUGENICS RECORD OFFICE, <strong>BULLETIN</strong> NO. 10 A extraordinarily numerous possibilities of combinations of traits, some normal and others perverted, make the total array of possible psychic conditions almost incomprehensibly great. Psychiatrists, however, have found that the commonest disorders tend to fall along certain definite lines and hence the possibility of classifying this sort of degeneracy. 7. THE ASTHENIC CLASS The great bulk of the world’s work is accomplished by strong and hardy individuals. It is true that great contributions have been made to civilization by physical weaklings, but this is rather the excep- tion: Physical weakness, if hereditary, is cacogenic, for a race of weaklings cannot long endure. Physical weakness is not the menace that feeble-mindedness is, but it is, nevertheless, great. A logical classi- fication of physical weaklings has not yet been made. This class includes individuals who are sane, are not feeble-minded, are not de- formed and are not paupers, nor do they belong to any other of the socially inadequate groups, but still they lack constitutional vigor and stamina. Some of the older physicians refer to “tone” as a state of general weakness that appears to complicate all diatheses. It might be possible to classify asthenic individuals in reference to the organs and tissues that are weak, such as individuals with weak bones or muscles, or with weak vital organs, such as lungs, arteries, stomach, or kidneys. Although not especially predisposed to any specific disease, yet they fall prey to almost any stressful circumstance, and the innate weakness appears to interfere with the full exercise of the normal function of mind and body in either physical or intellectual pursuits. “A sound mind in a sound body” is as much the motto of eugenics as it appeared to be the motto of the ancient Greeks. Heredi- tary physical inadequacy is cacogenic. 8. THE DIATHETIC CLASS In regard to the diathesis or predisposition to a specific ailment or undesirable condition, the problem does not turn upon whether diathesis exists at all, but only to what degree and in what cases diathesis is a fact and to what degree it is injurious to the welfare of the race. Hereditary traits do not date from birth, for birth is only a change of environment. The hereditary potentialities of an individual are determined past recall when the two parental gametes meet in fertilization to form the zygote.
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