Clipped from US, New York, New York, New York Times , October 17, 1912
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TOPICS OF THE TIMES.« # * ^ ■Whatever doubts oneDefectives may have, withthegen-and How to eral public appreciatingTreat Them. mt,e “u do™ 'Xits own danger from“ defectives,” as to the practicality cither of subjecting all of them now in existence to proper restraints or of preventing the production of others, there is iid question that something like both of these^ highly desirable ends really could be attained and that the first step toward doing it was suggested in the letter we printed yesterday over the signatures of Drs. MacDonald, Mabon, and Schlatp.They clearly pointed out the fact that now almost nothing is done for or* with men of the Schrank type until their malady has passed through its long period of incubation and then has culminated,as it is always likely to do, sooner or later, In a violent explosion—in this instance the. attack on Col. Roosevelt. Yet from childhood Schrank has manifested symptoms wrhlch, taken in connection with his heavily tainted heredity, would have revealed under sufficiently expert examination the need of a special training in childhood and of restraint afterward in case he proved unamenableto ti catment.Even to casual observation he has always' seemed abnormal—” a little off a gloomy, taciturn fellow, bitterly resentful of small Injuries, real and imagined, and showing both the illusions and the delusions of progressive paranoia. He was regarded as “ harmless,” however,as, indeed, he was, and as are all of his#class till the characteristic outbreak comes. His case was probably hopeless from the beginning, but it was made wholly so by Ignorance and neglect, and he went his predestined way till he became a dangerous public enemy.The remedy proposed by the distinguished alienists was the establishmentof a sort of clearing house through which all suspected children should be passed for the determination of their mental status and a subsequent disposition ofthem in accord with the ascertainedfacts. This is an admirable remedy, the only trouble with, it being that it is so far ahead of the time—that its application would be hotly resented by most parents of children “ slightly peculiar ” or “a little backward.” There is the real difficulty—the great obstacle confronting any such reform. A thorough-going eu-genist, moreover, would say that this plan does not go to the root of the evil and would criticise it as proposing the performance of an endless task instead ofr a « % •making the performance of the task unnecessary by cutting off the supply of defectives.
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