Insanity: Its Causes and PreventionStearns, Henry Putnam
Science
Insanity: Its Causes and Prevention
Stearns, Henry Putnam
Psychiatry -- Early works to 1900
I confidently believe the day will come when the first question which will
be asked concerning a child who is to commence an education, will be as to
his or her inheritance; and after obtaining all possible information
concerning this point, it will be a part of the teacher's duty to study
the physical and mental traits and tendencies of each child in the light
of this information. The time will come when the importance of
_individuality_ in education will be so highly appreciated that it will be
considered as essential in all recognized systems. Already there has been
a beginning in this direction, in reference to certain classes of
children. It is not many years since _feeble-minded children_ were treated
as most others now are, and were left to get any little education they
might be able to, with all others. Gradually the importance of individual
education for these weak-minded ones has dawned on the public mind; so
that by systems now in use, many of these, otherwise almost utterly
useless members of the community, have been trained to a degree of
usefulness and self-support.
What has been done for this class should be done for all classes of
persons whose inheritance has in any measure been of a morbid character.
These pyschic neuroses group themselves into certain forms, often at an
early age, and require special care and training from childhood, lest they
develop into actual disease in later life. Among these may be mentioned
the following:
1. The Precocious, }
2. The Passionate and Cruel,}
3. The Timid, }Child.
4. The Wilful, }
5. The Lonely, }
For each of these classes of children special lines of education and
management should be followed, and they should be of such a character as
may tend to repress and correct tendencies of character which in the
future will be almost certain to become morbid. The professional
observations of most physicians who have large experience with diseases of
the nervous system, will suggest the cases of patients who have become
insane, and in whose inheritances and histories some of the above-named
characters have been specially prominent in childhood.
Whatever, therefore, is to be done with a view to modify proclivities
toward those morbid neuroses which result from hereditary influences, or
have been acquired through the force of habit, must be accomplished mainly
through the influence of education, reaching, in different channels, both
parents and children.
CHAPTER IX.
CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES.
Something relating to the subject of consanguineous marriages, which are
not uncommon in some communities, may properly be added here, as bearing
on this subject, and as in some measure supplemental to the preceding
chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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