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

THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE’S WORK. 43
5. Syndactylism.
6. Polydactylism.
7. Ectrodactylism.
8. Rudimentary or absent patella.
9. Congenital genu recurvation.
10. Congenital curvation of legs (lateral).
11. Absence of tibia or fibula.
12. Club-foot (Talipes).
13. Congenital dislocation of the hip.
Eugenics is concerned with physical fitness no less than with
mental and moral adequacy, for a race cannot long endure and rise
in culture unless its members be strong and dexterous physically.
Mate selection has always been and doubtless always will be greatly
influenced by patent personal physical fitness and comeliness; it is
a determining factor of high value. Following the growth and dif-
fusion of knowledge concerning the hereditary nature of physical
defects, hereditary physical potentialities will also become assets in
selection. Thus eugenical education influencing mate selection on a
nation-wide scale must be depended upon to stamp out physical de-
formity when it is not associated with mental or with moral unfitness;
when it is so linked segregation, supported, if need be, by sterilization,
appears to be the proper eugenical remedy.
10. THE CACÆSTHETIC CLASS
Social adequacy depends so much upon the proper functioning
of the organs of special sense that individuals suffering from their
absence or their deformity are properly considered as one of the
primary groups of the socially inadequate. The organs of special
sense are very intricately constructed and hence subject to a corre-
spondingly numerous and serious group of disorders.
The following classification of hereditary defects of the sense
organs is based upon anatomical defects, which in turn destroy or
pervert normal function:
I. Eye.
1. Microphthalmus (including anophthalmus).
2. Megalophthalmus.
3. Atrophia Nervi Optici.
4. Retinitis Pigmentosa (including hemeralopia).