paring to enforce her compulsory education laws, to make effective her humanitarian schemes, to uplift her people at home.

Investigation reveals the fact that the Italian insane in New York State are recruited almost exclusively from the rosy, round, well-nourished vegetarian country people, who, after immigration into our country, settle in our large cities in close quarters, engage daily in long hours of in-door labor, and live upon a diet consisting largely of meat of bad quality. A year of such life works havoc with them.

The problem will be easily and immediately solved if we assist to suburban or, better, to farming localities the peasants from the country regions of sunny Italy.

It is our duty and our opportunity to join hands with the active, scientific and wise Italian organizations in New York City, the great entrance gate of this country; to enforce with no faltering hand the rules that must govern all immigration, and to co-operate with the Italian Government in making, as it now does, a careful selection of immigrants at the Italian ports of embarkation. Thus our country will receive a valuable class of desirable new citizens, unusually free from insanity or a tendency thereto.

THE IMBECILE WITH CRIMINAL INSTINCTS.*

BY WALTER E. FERNALD, M. D.,

Superintendent of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-minded, Waverley, Mass.

In this paper, I shall briefly consider the class of imbeciles who as a part of their life history present certain persistent tendencies or repeated acts of a criminal nature. I use the term "imbecile " advisedly as an adequate synonym for the many different expressions used to describe various degrees of lesser mental defect, resulting from causes operating before birth or in early childhood, as contrasted with mental impairment or disease developed later in the life of the individual, like dementia præcox, epilepsy, etc. Cases of actual idiocy are also excluded from this discussion.

The term imbecility was formerly applied only to a class of persons presenting simple, obvious intellectual short-comings. The field of mental defect has been gradually extended and widened so that the time-honored definitions and classifications have become incomplete and obsolete. To-day institutions for defectives are often expected to receive patients where the intellectual defect is apparently only moderate, and the principal reason for institution treatment is the failure to harmonize with the environment, as shown by low tastes and associates. In other cases, the prominent symptoms are general incorrigibility, purposeless and needless lying, a quarrelsome disposition, a tendency to petty stealing, a propensity for setting fires, aimless destruction of property, a tendency to run away and lead a life of vagrancy, sexual precocity or perversions-these may be the symptoms which impress the parent or the physician.

The recognition and understanding of these and other less obvious phases of defect are largely due to the correlation of the results of the modern scientific study of normal psychology, pedagogy, degeneracy, criminology and sociology.

*Read by title at the sixty-fourth annual meeting of the American Medico-Psychological Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 12-15, 1908.

A brief review of the ordinary phenomena and symptoms of imbecility is necessary for the proper interpretation of the cases to be described. From a biological standpoint the imbecile is an inferior human being. If the mental defect is due to direct heredity or to developmental abnormalities of the central nervous system, having their genesis in the ovule or in fœtal life, the various anatomical, physiological and psychical stigmata of degeneracy are usually present. Indeed, in no other class of human beings are these various stigmata found so constantly, so frequently and so well-marked as in the congenital imbecile. If the mental defect is caused by traumatism, or acute local disease, or other causes operating at birth or soon after birth, the physical stigmata of degeneracy are often absent.

Some of the physical evidences of mental defect are as follows: abnormalities in the size and shape of the skull and cranium; in the size, shape and weight of the brain; variations in the size, shape and relative position of the ears; abnormalities in the form, situation, and structure of the teeth; protruding lower jaw; congenital deformities of the hard palate; pallor of the skin; scanty beard, etc.

Imbeciles of all grades exhibit in varying degrees certain wellmarked mental characteristics. In mere memory exercises they may excel. They have weak will-power. The power of judgment is defective and uncertain, and often determined by chance ideas, not by the outcome of the past experience. Thought is scanty, limited mainly to daily experiences. They are unable to grasp and utilize the experiences of life.

Pronounced backwardness in ordinary school studies is, of course, a constant feature of the uncomplicated cases. At the end of his school life, at the age of 15 or 16 years, the imbecile may be able to read in the the third reader, to do simple addition and subtraction, and easy multiplication. Division is not often achieved.

Imbeciles are childish even in adult life. They make friends quickly and are cheerful and voluble. They are boastful, ungenerous, ungrateful. Notwithstanding their stupidity, they are cunning in attaining their own ends. They seem to have but little sympathy with distress or suffering. They are often cruel, espe

cially to small children or weaker persons. They seem to take special delight in stirring up trouble and are often fond of talebearing.

They are vain in dress and love bright and gaudy colors. They like to be well-dressed, and are indifferent to cleanliness of body. In actions and conversation their own personality always comes into prominence. They manifest unbounded egotism, leading to marked selfishness. Their whole life revolves around their own personal well-being and the possession of things desired.

They show little real affection for their relatives. Their affections are superficial and easily transferred. The mothers say, "They look at what I bring in my hands, and not in my face." Their letters consist mostly of a catalogue of senseless and useless things desired.

They are prone to lie without reason, and often lie unhesitatingly when truth would be to their own interest. They are inclined to steal.

They are morally insensible. As a rule, they are able to carefully differentiate in the abstract between what is right and what is wrong as applied to their personal environment, but in practice their ability to make these distinctions bears no relation to their actions and conduct.

They seldom show embarrassment or shame when detected in wrong-doing. I have never known an imbecile to exhibit traits of remorse. Correction or punishment is of little effect.

They revel in mawkish sentiment. They are susceptible to the emotional phase of religious expression. They are very apt to choose intimate companions very much younger than themselves, or persons very much beneath them socially or below them in the scale of intelligence. They are generally cowardly in the presence of actual physical danger. They are very susceptible to suggestion and are easily led.

They show marked physical insensibility. Galton says, “To the imbecile pain comes as a welcome surprise."

Few imbeciles have been seen to blush. They show an early craving for tobacco and alcohol. They are proverbially lazy and fond of idleness. They seem incapable of forethought.

Imbeciles of both sexes usually show active sexual propensities and perversions at an early age.