In other words, she had been taken in hand in time to save her from a life of incompetency, misery, and mental darkness. Is it not reasonable to infer, in the light of this and similar cases on record, that our institutions for the feeble-minded would be far less crowded than they are to-day had regenerative measures been likewise applied to their inmates in early childhood? Indeed, with Professor Lightner Witmer, dean of American clinical psychologists, I am prepared to affirm: "I believe that a child may be feeble-minded in one environment--for example, in his own home--and may cease to exhibit feeble-mindedness when placed in a different environment. I also agree with those modern students of insanity who assert that the development of some forms of insanity may be averted by a proper course of discipline and training. Analogously, I contend that because a child of sixteen or twenty presents a hopeless case of feeble-mindedness, this is no evidence that proper treatment instituted at an earlier age might not have determined an entirely different course of development." Also, as in the case of the criminal alleged to have been "born bad," mental backwardness has again and again been found to depend on comparatively slight physical defects--defects of eye, ear, mouth, nose, throat, teeth--the correction of which often results in a spontaneous and remarkable intellectual awakening.[2] Or the dullness mistaken for feeble-mindedness may be due to a generally weakened physical condition, the result of unhygienic home surroundings, lack of outdoor exercise, poor food, and so forth. Here is a case in point, reported by Professor Witmer. It is the case of a little Philadelphia girl, Fannie, the eight-year-old daughter of Russian-Jewish parents, whose two-room home is thus described by Professor Witmer: "The living-room had one window, and contained a table, a few chairs, a stove, a lounge, dirty clothes piled in one corner, a barking cur, and many flies. The table was covered with a piece of black oilcloth, and on this were usually to be found pieces of brown bread and glasses of tea. No meals were prepared and the family never sat down to table. Their diet consisted chiefly of bread, tea, and sometimes fish. The bread was always on the table for the flies to crawl over and the children to eat when their hunger drove them to it. "The front of the house looked out on a board fence which divided a double alley. In the rear was a small back yard. One hydrant at the entrance sufficed for the different families. There was underground drainage, but an offensive odour came from the closets. This was the soil in which Fannie had struggled to grow for eight years. When the school nurse visited the house, Fannie sat crouched in a corner, her eyes sullen and dead, her mouth hanging open, her skin showing the poorly nourished condition. Her eyes were crossed, her teeth irregular, the whole face devoid of life or interest.