Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
History
Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
Medicine, Military; Military hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Medical care -- United States
Then, in that connection, as to our friends, the morons and epileptics.
I am fond of saying that practically everybody, no matter how defective
he may be, has a certain capacity for usefulness. There is almost nobody
who is, under proper arrangements, a total loss socially. A Moron, of
six or seven years of age, may be ten per cent efficient. He may be ten
per cent efficient under one set at social conditions, maybe fifteen per
cent efficient under another set. He may be total loss under other sets
of conditions.
Now a lot of these people, like the young fellow I spoke of a while ago,
are very useful citizens in the hospital community. They would be a
total liability outside that community. We have always had these people
in the community and we always shall have them probably. It is perhaps a
worth-while endeavor to try to get the community, through these various
social agencies, to appreciate them for certain values. One of the
medical officers of the Army was discussing with me, a while ago, this
problem in the South, in the cotton mill districts, where there is a
large number of mentally deficient people. They do not do much of
anything, except perhaps, drink whiskey, breed and make trouble. They go
into the mills and either get injured or discharged. A lot of that
material is really capable of utilization. The mental defectives, as a
whole, are fairly good natured and tractable. There were lots of mental
defectives in the Army, enlisted men, who carried on and made good
soldiers. Some young fellows went into the Army from the School of
Feeble Minded, in Massachusetts, and had excellent records. The
Superintendent there kept track of his feeble-minded boys in the Army,
and they made excellent records because they belong to that type of
individual which has a very strong leaning upon persons in authority and
will follow his officer like a Newfoundland dog his master, will obey
orders to the letter and they make most valuable persons. So this
officer suggested to me that these feeble-minded groups running around
might be assembled into industrial units. They could be worked in
factories. In order to avoid the possibility of exploiting that type of
labor they could be employed under proper social conditions and placed
under the eye of a neuro-psychiatrist; and where there was an immense
shortage of labor, perhaps factory owners would be pleased to get these
men.
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