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_THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES_
EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS
DEGENERACY
[Illustration: DWARFISM AND GIANTISM.]
DEGENERACY
_ITS CAUSES, SIGNS, AND RESULTS_
BY EUGENE S. TALBOT, M.D., D.D.S.,
FELLOW OF THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF MEDICINE; MEMBER OF
THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; HONORARY MEMBER OF
THE BERLIN ODONTOLOGISCHEN GESELLSCHAFT, AND THE
ASSOCIATION GENERALE DES DENTISTES DE FRANCE;
PROFESSOR OF DENTAL AND ORAL SURGERY, WOMAN'S
MEDICAL SCHOOL, NORTH-WESTERN UNIVERSITY, U.S.A.
WITH 120 ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1898
PREFACE
The present work is the result of more than twenty years' labour in a
limited medical department of biology. It demonstrates once more the truth
of the scientific principle, that the truth or falsity of any theory or
working hypothesis becomes more and more demonstrable the further its
application is attempted in the explanation of new lines of facts. The
truth of the degeneracy doctrine had forced itself on the writer long
before its popular apotheosis under Lombroso and Nordau, because it alone
sufficed for an explanation of constitutional and local defects
(encountered in a seemingly limited speciality of medicine), which local
causes failed entirely to explain. The investigations thereon resultant
have appeared in medical and dental journals for the past two decades. The
present work is chiefly based on these researches. At the same time, the
author has drawn largely from all fields of biology cultivated by European
investigators, while he must acknowledge a particular indebtedness to the
investigations (of which he has made large use beside that elsewhere
specifically acknowledged) of certain American investigators--Rush,
Parkmen, Ray, G. Frank Lydston, C. L. Dana, C. F. Folsom, W. W. Godding,
E. C. Spitzka, E. D. Cope, D. R. Brower, Marsh, B. Sachs, Harriet C. B.
Alexander, Clara Barrus, H. M. Bannister, Delia E. Howe, Grace Peckham,
Adolph Meyer, Kerlin, Wiley, J. G. Kiernan, W. E. Allison, Osborn, R.
Dewey, Frederick Peterson, Gihon, Cowles, W. A. Hammond, A. B. Holder, C.
H. Hughes, F. W. Starr, F. C. Hoyt, J. H. McBride, C. K. Mills, C. B.
Burr, T. D. Crothers, W. S. Christopher, W. X. Sudduth, A. Lagorio, J.
Workman, Wilmarth, and others. These scientists had raised an exceedingly
stable foundation for the doctrine of degeneracy long before Lombroso and
Nordau (forcing one phase of the subject into popular recognition)
compelled an examination of the entire doctrine.
The work has been written with a special intention of reaching educators
and parents. With this object, it has avoided laying stress on any one
cause of degeneracy, and ignoring factors which produce it and are
aggravated by it. The doctrinaire reformer will here find no support for
any limited theory. While it does not pretend in the slightest degree to
give all the details of degeneracy, it attempts to lay down general
principles for practical purposes in a way that permits their application
to the solution of sociologic problems.
From a sense of scientific accuracy no attempts have been made to
demarcate, rigidly, abnormality from disease, or atavism from arrested
development, except as may be done by the features of the cases in which
the terms are used. The guiding principle adopted has been that the
factors of degeneracy affect in the ancestor the checks on excessive
action acquired during the evolution of the race, thus producing a state
of nervous exhaustion. The descendant in consequence is unable to reach
the state of the ancestor thus nervously exhausted.
For the illustrations, other than those that are original, the author is
indebted to the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, _Dental
Cosmos_, _The International Dental Journal_, _The St. Louis Clinical
Record_, to M. Felix Alcan, and to the officers of the New York State
Reformatory and Illinois State Reformatory, Drs. Geo. T. Carpenter, W. A.
Pusey, F. S. Coolidge, Ch. Fere, Zuckerkandl, John E. Greves, Amsterdam;
Ernst Sjoberg, Stockholm; Bastian, J. G. Kiernan, E. C. Spitzka, John
Ridlon, James W. Walker, and Ignatius Donnelly.
E. S. T.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE STIGMATA OF DEGENERACY 27
III. HEREDITY AND ATAVISM 40
IV. CONSANGUINEOUS AND NEUROTIC INTERMARRIAGES 79
V. INTERMIXTURE OF RACES 92
VI. TOXIC AGENTS 104
VII. CONTAGIOUS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES 121
VIII. CLIMATE, SOIL, AND FOOD 130
IX. SCHOOL STRAIN 150
X. THE DEGENERATE CRANIUM 161
XI. THE DEGENERATE FACE AND NOSE 177
XII. DEGENERACY OF THE LIP PALATE, EYE, AND EAR 196
XIII. THE DEGENERATE TEETH AND JAWS 219
XIV. DEGENERACY OF THE BODY 258
XV. DEGENERACY IN REVERSIONAL TENDENCIES 282
XVI. DEGENERACY OF THE BRAIN 294
XVII. DEGENERACY OF MENTALITY AND MORALITY 315
XVIII. CONCLUSIONS 346
INDEX OF AUTHORS 363
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 367
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
DWARFISM AND GIANTISM (_Journal of American Medical
Association_) _Frontispiece_
1. ANTE-CHRISTIAN IRISH PIPES (Donnelly, _Atlantis_) 111
2. ANTE-COLUMBIAN PIPES FROM SCULPTURE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON
(Donnelly, _Atlantis_) 112
3-6. CHANGES IN SKULL TYPES (_Original_) 134
7. WANT OF UNION IN FRONTAL SUTURE (Dr. Greves, Amsterdam) 163
8. STIGMATA OF DEGENERATE CRANIUM (Original) 165
9. HYDROCEPHALY (Dr. Ernst Sjoeberg, Stockholm) 166
10. KEPHALONES (Dr. Ernst Sjoeberg, Stockholm) 167
11. MICROCEPHALY (Dr. Ernst Sjoeberg, Stockholm) 168
12. DOLICHOCEPHALY (Barnard Davis) 169
13. SPHENOCEPHALY (New York State Reformatory) 170
14. BRACHYCEPHALY (Barnard Davis) 171
15. PLATYCEPHALY (Barnard Davis) 172
16. PLAGIOCEPHALY (Barnard Davis) 173
17. SCAPHOCEPHALY (Barnard Davis) 174
18. LARGE ORBITS (Dr. Greves, Amsterdam) 180
19. CAMPER'S ANGLE (Original) 181
20. JOHANNA, FEMALE CHIMPANZEE (Original) 182
21. NEGRO CRIMINAL YOUTH (Illinois State Reformatory) 182
22. CAUCASIAN FACE (Original) 183
23. DEGENERATE FACE AND ARREST OF UPPER JAW (Original) 184
24. DEGENERATE FACE AND NOSE (_Dental Cosmos_) 185
25. DEGENERATE FACE AND ARREST OF LOWER JAW (Original) 187
26. ASYMMETRICAL FACE (New York State Reformatory) 188
27. DEFLECTION OF NASAL SEPTUM (Dr. Greves, Amsterdam) 190
28. HYPERTROPHY OF TURBINATES (Dr. Greves, Amsterdam) 191
29. IRREGULAR DEVELOPMENT OF THE BONES OF THE NOSE
(Dr. Greves, Amsterdam) 192
30. OBLITERATED ANTRUM (Dr. Greves, Amsterdam) 193
31. CLEFT PALATE (Dr. G. T. Carpenter, Chicago) 198
32. HARE-LIP (Dr. G. T. Carpenter, Chicago) 201
33. CYCLOPIC EYE (Dr. J. G. Kiernan, Chicago) 204
34. CYCLOPIC MONSTER WITH SINGLE EYE (Dr. J. G. Kiernan,
Chicago) 205
35. FOETUS WITHOUT CHIN AND EARS AT EXTERNAL OPENING OF
FIRST GILL CLEFT (Bland Sutton, London) 207
36. EAR EMBRYOLOGY (Minot, Boston) 209
37. ARREST OF EAR DEVELOPMENT (_Journal of American
Medical Association_) 210
38. NORMAL EAR (Ibid.) 211
39. MOREL EAR (Ibid.) 213
40-45. DARWINIAN EARS AND ABNORMAL EARS (Ibid.) 215
46, 47. UNDEVELOPED EARS (Ibid.) 216
48, 49. ELEPHANTINE EARS (Ibid.) 217
Plates A and B. EVOLUTION OF THE TEETH (Osborn,
_International Dental Journal_) 223
50, 51. CALCIFICATION OF THE TEETH (Dr. C. N. Pierce,
Philadelphia) 226-7
52-56. SUPERNUMERARY TEETH (Original) 230-1
57-60. SUPERNUMERARY AND CONE-SHAPED TEETH (_Dental
Cosmos_) 232-3
61. CONE-SHAPED TEETH (Smale & Colyer, London) 234
62. MISSING THIRD MOLARS (Original) 235
63. MISSING THIRD MOLARS (Original) 236
64-66. MISSING LATERAL INCISORS (Original) 236-7
67. SO-CALLED HUTCHINSON'S TEETH (_American System of
Dentistry_) 238
68. DEGENERATE V-SHAPED JAW (Original) 239
69. HUTCHINSON'S TEETH (_Dental Cosmos_) 240
70, 71. CONE-SHAPED MOLARS (Ibid.) 240
72, 73. CONE-SHAPED MOLARS (Ibid.) 241
74. MIGRATING TEETH (Original) 241
75. CONE-SHAPED TEETH (Smale & Colyer, London) 242
76-78. RUDIMENTARY CUSPS (Original) 242-3
79. EXCESSIVELY DEVELOPED CUSPS (Smale & Colyer, London) 244
80-89. TEETH JOINED TOGETHER (_Dental Cosmos_) 246-7
90. V-SHAPED ARCH (Original) 249
91. SADDLE-SHAPED ARCH (Original) 251
92. HYPERTROPHY OF THE ALVEOLAR PROCESS (Original) 253
93. HYPERTROPHY OF THE ALVEOLAR PROCESS (Original) 254
94. ARREST OF THE FACE (New York State Reformatory) 255
95. ARREST OF THE FACE AND LOWER JAW (New York State
Reformatory) 256
96. SPINA BIFIDA (Dr. W. A. Pusey, Chicago) 259
97. ARRESTED CHEST (Dr. J. Ridlon, Chicago) 261
98. ECTRODACTYLIA (Dr. J. Ridlon, Chicago) 264
99. MARCRODACTYLIA (Dr. J. Ridlon, Chicago) 265
100. CLUB-FEET (Dr. J. Ridlon, Chicago) 267
101. ARREST OF FACE (Original) 270
102. FEMINISM (Dr. Fere, Paris) 273
103. FEMINISM (Dr. Fere, Paris) 275
104. ACROMEGALY (Original) 277
105. ACROMEGALY (_Journal of American Medical Association_) 279
106. DEGENERATE FEET (New York State Reformatory) 280
107. PREMATURE SENESCENCE (Original) 288
108. EXCESSIVE DEVELOPED APPENDIX (Original) 290
109. NORMALLY DEVELOPED APPENDIX (Original) 291
110. ARRESTED APPENDIX (Original) 292
111. BRAIN FROM PARANOIAC CRIMINAL (Dr. J. G. Kiernan,
Chicago) 295
112. BRAIN OF GAUSS (Vogt, _Lectures on Man_) 296
113. FOETAL BRAIN (Bastian) 297
114. IDIOT BRAIN (Dr. J. G. Kiernan, Chicago) 297
115. IMBECILE BRAIN (Spitzka, _Insanity_) 298
116. SPECIALISED FUNCTION IN THE CORTEX CEREBRI (Dana) 308
117. CELLS OF THE BRAIN (Spitzka, _Insanity_) 310
DEGENERACY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Considered as a condition hurtful to the type, the conception of
degeneracy may be said to appear even in the precursors of man, since
animals destroy soon after birth offspring which, to them, appear
peculiar. With that stage of development of the religious sense marked by
assigning malign occult powers to natural objects and forces, this view of
degeneracy became systematised, and exposed weakly or deformed offspring,
charged to evil powers, to death. This occult conception of degeneracy is
even yet a part of American folklore. Against degenerate children charms
are still used by the "witch-doctors" among the "Pennsylvania Dutch."
These people are on the level of culture of the early seventeenth century
middle class English, if not a little below it. The folklore of these, as
embodied in Shakespeare, demonstrates, according to J. G. Kiernan,[1] that
ere the seventeenth century the fact that "mental and moral defect
expressed itself in physical stigmata was recognised and even the term
used." Thistleton Dyer[2] remarks that it is an old prejudice, not yet
extinct, that those who are defective or deformed are marked by nature as
prone to mischief. Thus in _King Richard III._ (i. 3) Margaret calls
Richard--
"Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!"
She calls him hog in allusion to his cognisance, which was a boar. A
popular expression in Shakespeare's day for a deformed person was
"stigmatic." It denoted any one who had been stigmatised or burnt with
iron (an ignominious punishment), and hence was employed to represent a
person on whom nature had set a mark of deformity. Thus in the Third Part
of _Henry VI._ (ii. 2) Queen Margaret says--
"But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam;
But like a foul misshapen stigmatic,
Marked by the destinies to be avoided,
As venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings."
Again in the Second Part of _Henry VI._ (v. 1) young Clifford says to
Richard--
"Foul stigmatic, that's more than thou canst tell."
In _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (v. 1) Oberon wards off degeneracy from the
issue of the happy lovers by the following charm--
"And the blots of Nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be."
Constant allusions to this subject occur in old writers, showing how
strong was the belief of the early English on this point. King John (iv.
2) calls Hubert, the supposed murderer of Prince Arthur,--
"A fellow by the hand of Nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame."
Concerning this adaptation of the mind to the deformity of the body
Francis Bacon remarks: "Deformed persons are commonly even with Nature,
for as Nature hath done ill by them so do they by Nature, being void of
natural affection, and so they have their revenge on Nature."
The quaint old "Anatomist of Melancholy,"[3] Burton, seems but to
paraphrase modern curers of degeneracy when, at the end of his chapter on
the inheritance of defects, he remarks concerning this fetichistic notion:
"So many several ways are we plagued and published for our father's
defaults; in so much that as Fernelius truly saith: 'It is the greatest
part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for human kind, if
only such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to
marry.' An husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon
his land, he will not rear a bull or an horse, except he be right shapen
in all parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of
his breed; we make choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest
kine, and keep the best dogs, _quanto id diligentius in procreandis
liberis observandum_! And how careful, then, should we be in begetting of
our children! In former times some countries have been so chary in this
behalf, so stern, that if a child were crooked or deformed in body or
mind, they made him away; so did the Indians of old by the relation of
Curtius, and many other well-governed commonwealths according to the
discipline of those times. 'Heretofore in Scotland,' saith Hect Boethius,
'if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or
any such dangerous disease which was likely to be propagated from the
father to the son, he was instantly gelded; a woman kept from all company
of men; and if by chance having some such disease she were found to be
with child, she with her brood were buried alive'; and this was done for
the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted. A
severe doom, you will say, and not to be used amongst Christians, yet more
to be looked into than it is. For now by our too much facility in this
kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and
indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of
hereditary diseases, no family secure, no man almost free, from some
grievous infirmity or other, when no choice is had, but still the eldest
must marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, be they fools or
dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust through
riot, as he said, they must be wise and able by inheritance. It comes to
pass that our generation is corrupt, we have many weak persons both in
body and mind, many feral diseases raging among us, crazed families; our
fathers bad, and we are like to be worse."
This conception gradually developed into the widespread myth of a
primevally perfect man through the natural operation of that
psychological law whereby, as Macaulay remarks, society, constantly moving
forward with eager speed, is as constantly looking backward with tender
regret. They turn their eyes and see a lake where an hour before they were
toiling through sand.
From this view came the belief that man as existing is degenerate. This
degeneracy, while popularly charged to occult influences, was early
ascribed by scientists to physical causes. Aristotle, as Osborn[4] points
out, appears to have recognised degeneration or the gradual decline of
structures in form and usefulness, in his analysis of "movement" in
connection with development. Degeneration is first met with as a term in
an explanation of the origin of species by Buffon in the eighteenth
century. The conception itself occurs in a criticism by Sylvius of
Vesalius (1514-64), who had asserted that the anatomy of Galen could not
have been founded upon the human body, because he had described an
intermaxillary bone. This bone, Vesalius observed, is found in the lower
animals but not in man. Sylvius (1614-72) defends Galen on the ground that
though man had no intermaxillary bone at present this is no proof of its
absence in Galen's time. "It is luxury, it is sensuality, which has
gradually deprived man of this bone." This passage, as Osborn remarks,
proves that the idea of degeneration of structures through disuse, as well
as the idea of the inheritance of the effect of habit, or the
"transmission of acquired characters," is a very ancient one. Sylvius,
while here recognising factors of degeneracy, erred in considering
disappearance of the intermaxillary bone, not reappearance, as
degeneracy. He failed to recognise, moreover, the law of economy of growth
by which one structure is sacrificed for another or for the organism as a
whole. This law, indicated by Aristotle, but clearly outlined by Goethe in
1807, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire in 1818, underlies the physiological
atrophies and hypertrophies which play such a part in degeneracy.
The _Twelve Caesars_ of Suetonius (that stud book of imperial degeneracy as
it has been styled) stamps the decided impression on its readers that
Hippocratian notions of degenerate heredity strongly permeated Roman
thought, to revive in those Arabic, Italian, and British (Roger Bacon)
thinkers who created the scientific phase of the revival of learning.
In the science of medicine, as developed by Hippocrates,[5] the modern
conception of degeneracy is evident. Hippocrates argues against the
"sacred" nature of epilepsy, since it is a hereditary disease and hence
comes under the operation of physical law. He furthermore points out, as
did Aristotle, that epilepsy produced in the ancestor by traumatism and
other physical causes may be inherited by the child.
As the degeneration phase of evolution was less antagonistic to the
religious theory forced into biblical dogma by the Jesuit Suarez (in
opposition to the evolutionary views of St. Augustine and St. Thomas
Aquinas), being supported by biblical dicta (that when the fathers had
eaten sour grapes the children's teeth were set on edge) and fetichistic
folklore, it retained a dominance that the advanced phase lost. From the
time of Hippocrates, psychiatry (the science devoted to mental disorders)
continued to accumulate data of the origin and transmission of human
defects. The impetus given the evolutionary explanation of these data by
the seventeenth and eighteenth century biologists (Harvey, Buffon,
Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others) laid the foundation for the modern
doctrine of degeneracy.
Buffon[6] remarks that many species are being perfected or degenerated by
the great changes in land and sea, by the favours or disfavours of Nature,
by food, by the prolonged influences of climate, contrary or favourable,
and are no longer what they formerly were. He regarded temperature, food,
and climate as the three great factors in the alteration and degeneration
of animals.
Erasmus Darwin[7] considers that all life starts from a living filament
having the capability of being excited into action by certain stimuli.
This capability is that whereby plants and animals react to their
environment, causing changes in them which are transmitted to their
offspring. All animals undergo transformations which are in part produced
by their own exertions in response to pleasures and pains, and many of
these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.
Other effects of this excitability (such as constitute hereditary
diseases, like scrofula, epilepsy, insanity) have their origin in one or
perhaps two generations, as in the progeny of those who drink much vinous
spirits. Those hereditary propensities cease again if one or two sober
generations succeed, otherwise the family becomes extinct.
Benjamin Rush[8] (greatly influenced by the Erasmus Darwin school)
remarks that through hereditary sameness of organisation of the nerves,
brain and blood vessels, the predisposition to insanity pervades whole
families and renders them liable to this disease from a transient and
feeble operation of its causes. Insanity when hereditary is excited by
more feeble causes than in persons in whom this predisposition has been
acquired. It generally attacks the descendants in those stages of life in
which it has appeared in the ancestors. Children born previously to the
attack of madness in their parents are less liable to inherit it than
those who are born after it. Children born of parents who are in the
decline of life are more predisposed to insanity than children born under
contrary circumstances. A predisposition to certain diseases, seated in
parts contiguous to the seat of insanity, often descends from parents to
their children. Thus it occurs in a son whose father or mother has been
afflicted only with hysteria or habitual headaches. The reverse likewise
takes place. There are families in which insanity has existed where the
disease has spared the mind in the posterity, but appeared in great
strength and eccentricity of the memory and of the passions, or in great
perversion of their moral faculties. Sometimes it passes by all the
faculties of the mind, and appears only in the nervous system of persons
descended from deranged parents; again, madness occurs in children whose
parents were remarkable only for eccentricity of mind. Among the diseases
that attack the children of the insane, but did not exist in their
ancestors, are consumption and epilepsy.
Similar studies were later published by Pinel, Tissot, Chiarrurgi,
Stedman, Parkman, Brigham, Prichard, Esquirol, Jacobi, and other
American, English, French, Italian, and German alienists. Based upon the
data thus obtained, and upon the general principles thus outlined, then
appeared--nearly at the same time as the like epoch-making work (on
another phase of evolution), Darwin's _Origin of Species_--Morel's
_Treatise on Human Degeneracy_, wherein the principle of natural selection
was shown to involve the recognition of the physical conditions that
constitute degeneracy, and, necessarily, to exclude primeval perfection.
Morel's definition of degeneration as a marked departure from the original
type tending more or less rapidly to the extinction of it, forms the basis
of commonly accepted definitions.
While Morel practically outlined the modern study of degeneracy, his
theologic timidity forced an absolute definition of a state which,
according to his own admission, was purely relative. After fencing
somewhat with the position that there was a primevally perfect man,[9] he
admits with Tessier the primeval lowness of man, but also thinks that the
fall of man could create new conditions which, in his descendants, from
heredity and from causes acting on their health, tended to make them
depart from the primitive type. These departures from the primitive type
have led to varieties, some of which constitute races capable of
transmitting racial characteristics. Other varieties in the races
themselves have created the abnormal states which Morel has denominated
degeneracies. Each of these degeneracies has its own stamp from the cause
that produces it. Their common characteristic is hereditary transmission
under graver conditions than normal heredity. With certain exceptional
instances of regeneration, the progeny of degenerates presents progressive
degradation. This may reach such limits that humanity is preserved by its
excess. It is not necessary, however, that the ultimate stage of
degradation be reached before sterility occurs. Morel confines degeneracy
to a pathologic type, criticising F. Heusinger[10] for applying the term
degenerate to domestic animals which "throw back" to the wild or original
type. Morel's admission that causes influencing health produce deviations
which, under favouring conditions, become racial types capable of
indefinite transmission, saves him from absolute scientific inaccuracy,
but renders inconsistent his limitation of degeneracy. It may be
convenient to separate diseased states from anomalies, but such separation
can only be very relative. From his conservatism and his plentiful data,
Morel aroused much less antagonism than did a contemporary, Moreau (de
Tours), who bore to him the relation of Darwin to Wallace.[11] While
Moreau devotes much attention to the factors of degeneracy and its
stigmata (or marks), like Morel, his main point is the expansion of the
theory of Aristotle which Dryden epigrammatised into--
"Great wit to madness nearly is allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
As J. G. Kiernan shows,[12] this doctrine, early in the history of the
race, obtained dominance through the evolution of arts, sciences, and
religions from fetichism. Phenomena manifested by fetich priests (of the
Shaman type) so closely resembled epileptic insanity in its frenzies and
visions that the two states were long regarded as identical, whence the
term "_morbus sacer_." The supernatural influences which, in current
belief, underlay epilepsy were, at the outset, malign or benign as they
were offended or placated. They became benign, and the insane were under
protection of a deity, as in Mussulman countries. Later still the
demon-possession theory gained dominance, and at length the demon sank
into disease. Throughout all this evolution the belief in an inherent
affinity between insanity and genius persisted.
Aristotle, in whose day the disease notion was becoming dominant, asserts
that, under the influence of head congestion, persons sometimes become
prophets, sybils, and poets. Thus Mark, the Syracusan, was a pretty fair
poet during a maniacal attack, but could not compose when sane. Men
illustrious in poetry, arts, and statesmanship are often insane, like
Ajax, or misanthropic like Bellerophon. Even at a recent period similar
dispositions are evident in Plato, Socrates, Empedocles, and many others,
above all, the poets.
According to Plato, "Delirium is by no means evil, but when it comes by
gift of the gods, a very great benefit. In delirium the sibyls of Delphi
and Dodona were of great service to Greece, but when in cold blood were of
little or none. Frequently, when the gods afflicted men with epidemics, a
sacred delirium inspired some men with a remedy for these. The Muses
excite some souls to delirium to glorify heroes with poetry, or to
instruct future generations."
Precedent to the works of Morel and Moreau appeared their source and
inspiration, Prosper Lucas's _Natural Heredity_.[13] Here the biologic
current of thought encountered the sociologic current; although the waves
clashed, the two currents merged into and modified each other. The
biologist demonstrated that degenerate types often "threw back" in their
structures, and this very "throwing back" made them the fittest to
survive. The sociologist found that the only test of acquired or inherited
degeneracy in man was disaccord with environment. The co-existent moral
and physical defects resultant on heredity found by Erasmus Darwin, Rush,
Parkman, Grohmann, and others tended to show that all types of defectives
might be a product of heredity.
These stimulating researches into the sources of crime led to a
controversy which reached its height two decades ere the treatise of
Morel. To this controversy three suggestive works owed their origin: a
psychological treatise by Dr. Lauvergne[14] on felons, a romance with a
purpose by Eugene Sue,[15] and a suggestively practical brochure by a
rather corrupt police official, Vidocq.[16] Seemingly conflicting as were
these productions, all strikingly illustrated the influence of heredity
and environment in the production of defectives. To these productions were
soon added those of Moreau (de Tours),[17] Attemyer, Eliza Farnham,[18]
the American Sampson,[19] Dally, Lelut, Camper, and the older Voisin.
Morel[20] laid the foundation of what is widely known as the Lombroso
School by a brochure wherein he proposed to entitle morbid anthropology,
"that part of the science of man the aim of which is to study phenomena
due to morbid influences and to malign heredity."
To the factor of atavism, inconsistently ignored by Morel, the early
embryologic studies of Von Baer and the biologic studies resultant on the
transmutation of species lent special emphasis. Three possibilities of
life await, as Wilson[21] remarks, each living being: either it remains
primitive and unchanged, or it progresses toward a higher type, or it
backslides and retrogresses. The factors underlying the stable state force
the animal to remain as it is; those underlying the progressive tendency
make it more elaborate, while the factors of degeneration, on the other
hand, tend to simplify its structure. It requires no special thought to
perceive that progress is a great fact of nature. The development of every
animal and plant shows the possibilities of nature in this direction. But
the bearings of physiological backsliding are not so clearly seen.
That certain animals degenerate or retrogress in their development is
susceptible of ready and familiar illustration. No better illustration is
needed than is derived from the domain of parasitic existence. When an
animal or plant attaches itself partly or wholly to another living being,
and becomes more or less dependent upon the latter for support and
nourishment, it exhibits, as a rule, retrogression and degeneration. The
parasitic "guest" dependent on its "host" for lodging alone, or it may be
for both board and lodging, is in a fair way to become degraded in
structure, and, as a rule, exhibits marked degradation where the
association has persisted sufficiently long. Parasitism and servile
dependence act very much in structural lower life as analogous instances
of mental dependence on others act on man.
The destruction of characteristic individuality and the extinction of
personality are natural results of that form of association wherein one
form becomes absolutely dependent on another for all the conditions of
life. A life of mere attachment exhibits similar results, and organs of
movement disappear by the law of disuse. A digestive system is a
superfluity to an animal which, like the tapeworm, obtains its food ready
made in the very kitchen, so to speak, of its host. Hence the lack of
digestive apparatus follows the finding of a free commissariat by the
parasite. Organs of sense are not necessary for an attached and rooted
animal; these latter, therefore, go by the board and the nervous system
itself becomes modified and altered. Degradation wholesale and complete is
the penalty the parasite has to pay for its free board and lodging; and in
this fashion Nature may be said to revenge the host for the pains and
troubles wherewith, like Job of old, he may be tormented.
The most emphatic biologic degeneration is that discovered by
Kowalevsky[22] in the sea squirt, which, in its larval state, is a
vertebrate, and when adult is an ascidian, seemingly far below the
cuttlefish and the worms. This strikingly illustrates that, as Ray
Lankester[23] has said, degeneration is a gradual change of structure by
which the organism becomes adapted to less varied and less complex
conditions of life; a reverse of evolution which proceeds from the
indefinite and homogeneous to the definite and heterogeneous with a loss
of explosive force due to the acquirement of inhibitions or checks.
This principle of biologic degeneration, long recognised, was most lucidly
enforced by Dohrn[24], whose views were later extended by Ray Lankester.
The parallelism of animal degeneracy with that of man, so clearly evident
even in the parasitic nature of defectives, was, as Meynert[25] showed,
due to the fact that the fore-brain is an inhibitory apparatus against the
lower and more instinctive natural impulses. The higher its development
the greater is the tendency to subordinate the particular to the general.
Even in insects a high social growth occurs, as in the bee and ant
communities. The same is the case in the development of man; in the
infant, a being entirely wrapped in its instincts of self-preservation,
the "primary ego" is predominant and the child is an egotistic parasite.
As development goes on this standpoint is passed, conscience assumes its
priority, the fore-brain acts as a check on the purely vegetative
functions and the "secondary ego" takes precedence over the primary one;
this is the general order of society, designated as civilisation or social
order. If this inhibition become weakened or disordered, predominance of
the natural instincts or impulses occurs, and when it is totally lost the
individual is in the position of a criminal who opposes the ethical order
of society--a parasite, and one of the worst kind who not only lives upon
his host but destroys him in doing so.
Hence degenerate tendencies are reversions in type indicating the original
source of the inhibition.
The tree of Moreau[26] illustrates clearly the essential principles of
these inter-relations of defect, further elucidated by the observations of
Sander[27] on the connection of deformed central nervous systems with
mental and moral disorder.
_NERVOUS HEREDITY._
{ Science { Music.
Exceptional Intelligence { Arts { Painting.
{ Letters
{ { Paretic dementia.
{ { Paralyses.
{ Brain { Tumours.
Lesions of the Nerve Centres { { Brain Softening.
{ { Congestion.
{
{ { Softening of Spinal
{ Spinal Cord { Cord.
{ { Myelitis.
{ Epilepsy.
{ Chorea.
Neuroses { Stammering.
{ Convulsive Fits.
{ Hysteria.
{ Utopians.
Intellectual States { Eccentrics.
{ Mixed Conditions.
{ Prostitutes.
Emotional States { Criminals.
{ Unstable.
Neuralgia { External.
{ Internal.
{ { Symptomatical.
{ Acute Insanity { Idiopathic.
{ { Alcoholic.
Psychoses { Imbecility
{ Idiocy { General Insanity.
{ Chronic Insanity { Dementia.
{ Partial Insanity.
{ Congenital
{ Blindness.
Special and General Conditions of the Senses { Anaesthesiae.
{ Deafness.
{ Hyperaesthesiae.
Nutritional Defect.
The extensive studies of Niepce,[28] Vogt,[29] and others on idiot biology
sought to show that the brain was not merely arrested in development, but
sometimes reverted even as low as the sauropsida type (reptiles and
birds). Grohmann,[30] as early as 1820, had "often been impressed in
criminals, especially in those of defective development, by the prominent
ears, the shape of the cranium, the projecting cheek-bones, the large
lower jaws, the deeply placed eyes, the shifty, animal-like gaze."
Maudsley[31] observes that in the case of such an extreme morbid variety
as a congenital idiot we have to do with a defective nervous organisation.
Marchand, in the brain of two idiots of European descent, found the
convolutions fewer in number, individually less complex, broader and
smoother than in the apes. The condition results neither from atrophy nor
mere arrest of growth, but consists essentially in an imperfect evolution
of the cerebral hemispheres or their parts, dependent on an arrest of
development. The proportion of the weight of brain to that of body is
extraordinarily diminished. With the brain of the orang type comes a
corresponding defect of function. With this animal type of brain in idiocy
sometimes appear animal traits and instincts. One class of idiots is
justly designated theroid, so brute-like are its members.
The human brain in the course of foetal development passes through the
same stages as other vertebrate brains, and to some extent these
transitional stages resemble the permanent forms of their brain. Summing
up, as it were, in itself the leading forms of vertebrate type, there is
truly a brute brain within the man's, and when the latter stops short of
its characteristic development, it is natural that it should manifest only
its most primitive functions.
It must, however, be pointed out that the human brain, even of the idiot
or microcephales, never resembles, _as a whole_, the brain of any
anthropoid or lower animal form. Such a position was maintained by Vogt,
but has long since been abandoned. The existing anthropoid apes are not
the ancestors of man, and have pursued a different development.[32]
Despine's[33] researches revealed the absence of human checks on the
instinctive tendencies in criminals. He, however, started from the
doctrine of moral imbecility as elaborated by Rush, Prichard, Brigham,
Ray, Galt, and others. Bruce Thomson,[34] testing Despine's results by
primitive races and Scotch criminals, found that defective, abnormal, and
anomalous states of the instinctive faculties exist in entire races and in
the "moral idiots" that occur in the best races. Criminals form a variety
of the human family quite distinct from law-abiding men. A low type of
physique indicating a deteriorated character gives a family likeness due
to the fact that they form a community which retrogrades from generation
to generation. The low physical condition of juvenile criminals in
reformatories, &c., becomes at once obvious if they be compared with
healthy, active school children. They are puny, sickly, scrofulous, often
deformed, with peculiar, unnaturally developed heads, sluggish, stupid,
liable to fits, mean in figure, and defective in vital energy, while at
the same time they are irritable, violent, and too often quite
incorrigible. The adults usually have a singularly stupid and insensate
look. The complexion is bad. The outlines of the head are harsh and
angular. The boys are ugly in feature, and have, as a rule, repulsive
appearances. These diseases of criminals are a proof of their low type and
deteriorated condition. Their deaths are mainly due to tubercular diseases
and affections of the nervous system. In the greater number crime is
hereditary, a tendency which is, in most cases, associated with bodily
defect, such as spinal deformities, stammering or other imperfect speech,
club-foot, cleft-palate, hare-lip, deformed jaws and teeth, deaf-mutism,
congenital blindness, paralysis, epilepsy, and scrofula.
Elisha Harris,[35] of New York, among 233 convicts found 54 to belong to
families in which insanity, epilepsy, and other neuroses existed.
Eighty-three per cent. belonged to a criminal, pauper, or inebriate stock,
and were, therefore, hereditarily or congenitally affected. Nearly 76 per
cent. of their number hence proved habitual criminals. According to
Harris, crime, pauperism, and insanity revert into each other, so that
insanity in the parent produces crime or pauperism in the offspring, or,
_vice versa_, crime or pauperism in the parent produces disease or
insanity in the offspring. Campagne, Broca, G. Wilson, and others about
the same time made similar researches.
The American sociologist, Samuel Royce, after a careful study of American
and European defective classes,[36] found that observation of the
hereditary nature of pauperism which congenitally reverts into insanity,
disease or crime, leaves no doubt but that pauperism is one of the worst
forms of race deterioration, and that the paralysis of the human will and
its energies is but the result of a fearful dissolution in progress.
Extensive researches made by Charles S. Hoyt,[37] of the New York State
Board of Charities (1874), into the origin of the defective classes of
that state, show that the pauper, hysteric, epileptic, prostitute,
criminal, born-blind, deaf-mute, paranoiac, recurrent lunatic and idiot
were buds of the same tree of degenerate heredity. E. C. Spitzka,[38]
basing his researches on the principles of Morel as expanded and
critically applied by Meynert,[39] reached essentially the same results as
also did Westphal, Krafft-Ebing, Grille, Kerlin, Axel Key, Magnan,
Foville, Bjornstrom, Amadei, Schuele, Nicolson,[40] Tonnini, Tamburini,
Verga, Tamassia, Kowalevsky, and it may be said the German Psychiatrical
Society (which, by accepting a conception of the distortion of mental
faculties otherwise seemingly high, based on brain deformity rather than
disease, accepted the degeneracy doctrine of to-day).
For several decades, moreover, the stigmata of degeneracy have appeared in
French, German, Austrian, Russian, Italian, and Scandinavian court reports
as evidence of hereditary defects.
As often happens in science--
"Thought by thought is piled till some great truth
Is loosened and the nations echo round."
Wherefore about this period (1870-78) appeared the first volume of the
epoch-making work of Cesare Lombroso,[41] who, erroneously credited with
being the apostle of the modern doctrine of degeneracy, has admittedly
done more to stimulate research than any other investigator. This work
exerted an influence at first in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia,
and the Scandinavian countries, while on the English-speaking countries,
despite the apparently fertile soil prepared for it, its influence was
seemingly slight. Under the degradation produced in many American
charitable and correctional institutions by corruption, naturally
resultant on a civil war, science therein was at a decided discount
between 1861 and 1881. A school arose which, defying the individualistic
rule of English common law underlying the institutions of the United
States, pandered to mob-law and theologic prejudice by denying certain
well-ascertained facts in human degeneracy. This school, represented at
the Guiteau trial by the experts for the prosecution, denied heredity and
that moral defect could result from physical abnormality. This school,
however, was by no means representative of American psychiatry or
sociology. Rush, Brigham, James MacDonald, Gait, McFarland, W. W. Godding,
Ray, C. H. Hughes, Kerlin, Patterson, Wilbur, Fisher, J. H. McBride, C. H.
Nichols, C. A. Folsom, Cowles, and others accepted Morel's principles.
Spitzka,[42] long ere the trial, pointed out that criminals displayed the
stigmata of Morel, and that the more intellectual types of insanity were
based on brain deformity rather than disease.
Benedikt,[43] of Vienna, in 1879 stated that "criminals generally have
nothing analogous to monomaniacs. They tend to develop distinct
peculiarities of organisation and psychic features, and these
peculiarities are the product of their social condition." J. G.
Kiernan,[44] reviewing his work, remarked that any one who had at all
examined the question would be convinced that between the true criminal
type, the imbecile and the paranoiac (_primaere verrueckt_) the
psychological relations and their anatomical bases are intimate and close.
Had Benedikt examined the insane and criminals, not for convolutional
aberrations alone, but also for heterotopias, &c., he would never have
written the sentence just quoted.
W. W. Godding,[45] commenting on the evidence of J. P. Gray,[46] the
leader of the American school that denies degeneracy, feelingly remarked
that "the disordered mind does not cease to be a unit although the
observed manifestations of its insanity may seem to be confined in some
cases to the emotion; in others to the affection; and in still others to
the intellectual powers. We cannot deny that the old masters were as
keen-sighted observers as ourselves. I dislike to hear drunkenness called
dipsomania, as I so often do; but I do not therefore say that dipsomania
is only drunkenness. It might improve my standing with the legal
fraternity if I should pronounce kleptomania only another name for
stealing, but my personal observations convince me that the insane have
sometimes a disposition to steal, which is a direct result of their
disease, and for which they are no more accountable than the puerperal
maniac is for her oaths.
"And now, after all these years of careful research, and our asylum
reports[47] rendered bulky with long tables prepared with so much care,
involving inquiry on the origin of the disease not alone in the direct
family line, but in the collateral branches also; just when the medical
profession has come to believe that if one fact in medical science be
better established than another, it is that insanity is hereditary, and we
undertake in the present case to look up hereditary predisposition, and
the family disposition likewise, we are met with the withering conundrum,
'Can a man inherit insanity from his uncle?' and we are told that there is
no such thing as hereditary insanity. Yes, gentlemen, I understand you;
the tendency to the disease is inherited. And so in the strict use of
language there is no such thing as insane delusion; but we know that
language is seldom used with scientific exactness, and no one is at a loss
to understand what we mean when we say that Jones is full of insane
delusions, insanity being hereditary in his family. Yes, and if Jones
should marry an insane woman, the chances are good that Jones's son will
turn out crazy, no matter how carefully he may be brought up under the
direction of the most eminent psychist, for that little germ which you
call 'a tendency'--so minute that it will elude your most careful scrutiny
with scalpel and microscope--is a fixed fact, and will prove more potent
than all theories. Not born there; develops. Ah, how is it that science
shows us that syphilis and small-pox and tubercle are born in the
offspring, that the infant comes into the world with spina bifida,
idiotic, hydrocephalic, acephalic, that the child is blind and mute and
misshapen in his mother's womb, but is never insane? Because, forsooth, we
have seen fit to limit insanity to disease of the brain, and disease is
not inherited. Is it possible that in all these years it has not been Dr.
Gray's lot as it has been mine to be consulted about those 'queer'
children of insane parentage, who are perverse from the start? Will he say
that the perverseness is only a 'badness' which should be whipped out of
the child? But that has generally been thoroughly tried before the
physician is consulted. Heterodox I know it is, but observed facts compel
me to be heterodox with Prichard and Esquirol and Ray, with Morel and
Griesinger and Maudsley, and I know not how many others, in recognising in
some cases a condition of inherent defect born in the individual, and not
a result of education--a condition which writers have recognised under
various names as hereditary mental disorder, insane diathesis, insane
temperament."
The Guiteau trial so stimulated studies of degeneracy that two experts for
the prosecution, A. McL. Hamilton[48] and H. M. Stearns,[49] later changed
their views as to degeneracy, while C. L. Dana, a strong supporter of the
Gray school in 1881, subsequently made valuable contributions to the
literature of the degeneracy stigmata. The position then taken by Spitzka
and Kiernan as to the cerebral basis of degeneracy was in 1882 supported
by H. Howard,[50] of Montreal; Workman,[51] of Toronto; Kerlin,[52] of
Pennsylvania; Osler,[53] of Baltimore; and C. K. Mills,[54] of
Philadelphia.
It was during 1881, moreover, that Jacobi made extensive studies of
degeneracy in royalty and aristocracy,[55] as earlier had Ireland.[56]
From the time of Itard degenerate phenomena in idiots had been traced to
cerebral mal-development. Kerlin[57] pointed out that "epileptic change"
in them was marked by moral alteration similar in explosive characters to
that so frequently observed in criminals. In England students of idiocy
like Clouston, Shuttleworth, Beach, Ireland, Langdon Down, and others, had
early brought the recognition of its inter-relations with insanity, crime
and neuroses into strong relief. To the studies of Bruce Thomson,
Maudsley, and Nicolson, Tyndall[58] gave strong support from the actual
experience of a governor of a great British prison, who found that the
prisoners in his charge might be divided into three distinct classes: the
first class consisted of persons who ought never to have been in prison;
external accident and not internal taint had brought them within the grasp
of the law, and what had happened to them might happen to most of us; they
were essentially men of sound moral stamina, though wearing the prison
garb. Then came the largest class, formed of individuals possessing no
strong bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances which
would mould them into either good or evil members of society. Thirdly,
came a class, happily not a large one, whom no kindness could conciliate
and no discipline tame. They were sent into the world labelled
"incorrigible," wickedness being stamped, as it were, upon their
organisation.
With the close of the year 1883 the degeneracy doctrine may be regarded as
having practically been accepted in biology, in anthropology, in
sociology, in criminology, in psychiatry, and general pathology. Debate
was henceforth not as to its existence, but as to its limitations.
Precedent to 1835 determinism in popular thought due to Calvinistic
predestination had, in English-speaking countries, fought for the
doctrine; subsequent thereto the theologic reaction against Calvinism was
a strong opposing force, whose influence was finally destroyed by the
practically general acceptance of the doctrine of evolution in the late
seventies.