As to treatment in the sense of a therapeutic measure or procedure for ameliorating the condition, there is none. Feeble-mindedness is not a disease. To be feeble-minded simply means that the mind for some reason has not developed to its full and complete maturity and under these conditions there is no drug or treatment known to science that can re-establish the growth when once it has permanently stopped. Much confusion in regard to this matter has existed in the past, largely because feeble-minded persons are subject to many if not all of the diseases that affect normal individuals. From this fact it was thought that the feeble-mindedness itself was caused by the disease and consequently any treatment that might improve this disease was expected to improve the feeble-mindedness. Experience has abundantly proved the error of this view.
It follows from this that the only treatment of which we can speak is social. The feeble minded person is socially incompetent, that is to say, is not able to take care of himself or live an independent life. He must always be cared for, just like a child. Indeed, he is a child in all but his physical form. At the present time the most prevalent view as to the treatment of the feeble-minded is that they should be seg regated in institutions or colonies. The colony for the feeble-minded is nothing more than a group of such persons controlled by intelligent people in an environment as human and normal as possible, but where the conditions of life are simplified so that these persons of limited in telligence are able to live such a life as their limited mentality will permit; all of the com plexities of modern civilization being removed or taken care of by those in charge.
Within the past decade a more intensive study of the problem of defective mentality has brought about the recognition of the fact that the number of such defectives is vastly greater than had ever been imagined and that large proportions of our criminals, paupers, prostitutes, drunkards, ne'er-do-wells, and even common laborers are mentally defective, in the sense that they have not the mind, the judg ment, the will power to enable them rise higher than they do in the social scale or to manage their own affairs with ordinary pru dence. In view of this fact, the question of colonization becomes a very serious one. From the standpoint of practicability it is realized by the students of the problem that it is impossible to colonize all of these people, partly because we cannot provide the means necessary for their support; and largely because many of them still have enough intelligence to wish to be free and independent and do not take kindly to a life in which their affairs are largely managed for them. The consequence of this is, as stated above, that nine-tenths of the estimated number of mental defectives are not colonized. They are at large. Those of school age are in the public schools,— except the very low grade imbeciles and the idiots. This fact is being recognized and our more progressive cities are providing special classes for the care and training of these dull pupils. The argument for this is two-fold; first, and perhaps most im portant, that the normal children are vastly better off and more easily cared for and in structed when the defectives are removed from their classes. The second, and the more often realized and appreciated reason, is that the defectives themselves require an entirely different kind of education from the normal child. It is now known that they cannot master
abstractions and consequently cannot learn, to any satisfactory degree, the usual subjects of the public school. They can be trained, how ever, to use their hands and to do such manual and industrial work as requires but little judg ment. The policy at present then is to colonize as many cases as can be provided for or as can be induced to go to the colonies and to care for the rest in special classes in the public schools. The objection to the public school care of these children is that, the con dition being so strongly hereditary, the chil dren who do not go to the institutions or to colonies are left free to marry as they grow up and thus propagate another race of mental defectives. The second difficulty is that these defectives very easily become criminal or anti social beings when not properly handled. They are easily influenced by vicious people, or even of their own accord arc apt to get into trouble 'because all of the lower instincts which in nor mal persons are regulated and controlled by their judgment and reason, their training and experience, are in these cases uncontrolled and consequently lead them into criminality or other anti-social acts. For example, the feeble minded boy will steal, because this is a natural, childish impulse, and he does not learn the abstract that stealing is wrong. The feeble-minded young woman will become a sex offender because yielding to the sex impulse is a natural instinct and she cannot learn the abstract principle that out of wedlock this is sin.
The saving fact in the situation is that in many of the feeble-minded these instincts are comparatively mild; and, if the condition is early recognized in childhood and the individual carefully trained and kept away from the knowl edge of vice and very carefully guarded and controlled during life, they may be kept rela tively innocent; and if wisely trained may be more or less useful. This, of course, does not apply to the lowest grade that have so little mentality that they must have perpetual care.
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