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Is Asexualization Ever Justifiable In The Case Of Imbecile Children

Creator: S.D. Risley (author)
Date: June 1905
Publication: Journal of Psycho-Asthenics
Source: Available at selected libraries

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READ AT VINELAND MEETING, 1905

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S.D. RISLEY, M.D. PHILADELPHIA.

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AN adequate study of the question presented for your consideration in-troduces us at once to some of the most profound and intricate problems involving the social structure of our race. To meet these problems wisely will require the united and best endeavor of the physician and the jurist and the wisest exercise of a broad and scientific philanthropy.

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In no direction possibly has greater advance been made during the past century on medico-sociologic lines than in our knowledge of the defective classses of the population; this knowledge, however, has served only to afford a more adequate comprehension of the extreme complexity of the problem of how we can best deal with these unfortunates. Careful study of the social evolution of the race has, on the one hand, taught us the hopeless condition of the habitual criminal, the mentally defective and pauper classes. In large measure discouragement has thus far been the result of our endeavor to re-form the one or train to useful citizenship the other. The higher ethical considerations cause us to stand aghast at the suggestion that they be left, as indeed they were before the advent of the Christian era, to the unobstructed operation of the law of selection. This law, harsh, and utterly void of sym-pathy as at first sight it seems, was nevertheless the natural method of progress for the race; but under modern social conditions with its altruistic ideals, based upon the recognition of a universal brotherhood, the weak and unfortunate are protected against the operation of the law which ordained their destruction. In the eye of the law of selection they were reprobate. We have sought for their physical redemption but have been taught the futility of our well-meant endeavors. We have fed and clothed the pauper, and sought to imbue him with the spirit of thrift and self-help, but like "the sow that was washed he has returned to wallow in the mire." Instead of hanging the thief, as was done in former times, he has been placed in a reformatory, taught useful trades and his mind stored with moral precepts; "but can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" The criminal too often remains the criminal still. He, too, is reprobate. We have reared asylums and training schools for the feebleminded, and have sought to protect and to train them into useful lives only to discover that they too are the victims of a physical and moral reprobation.

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At the beginning of a new century we stand before the problems of de-generacy and criminology, in some measure discouraged, yet thoughtful. From the standpoint of ethics we must regard these unfortunates as our wards. From the view point of social evolution we must declare then unfit; we can discover no rational basis for their protection in the inalienable right of liberty of action and the choice of pursuit. They remain an ulcer on our social tissue. Christian ethics has reared for them almshouses, asylums and hospitals. The state has immured them in reformatories and prisons for the protection of the community against their frailties and their deeds. Science has grouped them in classes apart, as the irresponsible victims of heredity and disease, or of alienation by natural laws. What shall we do with them? What course can we take which shall neither wound our compassion nor thwart our sense of justice and equity, and at the same time permit us to follow wisely the teaching of science? To give freedom of action to these unfortunates is only to perpetuate the evils we recognize as inseparable from their existence, and to multiply sorrow; it would prove to be the opening wide of a Pandora's box to permit the escape and free riot of monstrous, indescribable things which a Hercules with a thousand lives could not vanquish in untold generations. It is not necessary in this presence, even did time permit, to discuss the plans which have been suggested and those which have been put in operation for the betterment of the idiot amid the imbecile, the pauper and the criminal, or to point out the discouraging result of these well meant and scientifically conducted experiments. No hope except by custodial care has ever been inspired, even in the minds of the most sanguine, for the low-grade imbecile and idiot; but for the middle and high-grade defective hope was excited, by the frequent display of cun-ning ingenuity so often witnessed, that, by suitable training in well equipped schools, the ban of heredity, the blighting, congenital incubus, might in suffi-cient degree be lifted from his life to send him forth into the world to a lim-ited but useful citizenship. But increasing experience has served to show that the improvement, even in the most promising examples of the result of train-ing, is but short-lived, and that even under the continued stress of the school environment the ban of degeneration very soon once more asserts its sway and they settle back into the mire whence they had been digged. Any study of the statistics which have been rapidly accumulating during recent years serves to show the malignant, immutable influence of heredity in the defective and criminal classes. To permit them to propagate is not only to perpetu-ate their kind to rapidly multiply the associated evils in our social structure. McKim, recognizing the evils to society growing out of the unfortunate lives of these defective classes, witnessing the very intimate relation between degen-eracy, epilepsy, inebriacy, and crime, has not hesitated to advocate even the painless taking of the life of such by the state, expecting by this radical treatment to end at least the propagation of their kind. This is certainly a radical measure, a severe blow to our compassion but serves to suggest, at least one author's appreciation of the ghastly features of the social evil which our "softness," the ethical basis of our modern civilization has per-mitted to grow up in our midst. Not only are vast numbers of hereditary paupers, imbeciles, inebriates, and criminals being born annually in our midst to swell the number of these degenerates, but they are entering through the too widely open door of our immigration system.

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