"
Feeblemindedness" was one of the most frequent diagnoses, which encompassed abnormal behavior and very low scores on IQ tests.
forcibly sterilize on the basis of "
feeblemindedness, idiocy, or
She delves into the murky science of heredity that shifted under the weight of religion and failed to prove that disability and
feeblemindedness were indeed threatening, subhuman categories.
medicine should then assume a responsibility for curbing the surge of
feeblemindedness" (Winzer 1993, 300).
With the help of funding from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, over the course of 29 years the ERO collected hundreds of thousands of pedigrees that documented the heritability of "criminality," epilepsy, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and "
feeblemindedness," a catchall term used to describe varying degrees of mental retardation and learning disabilities.
The influence of eugenics on social welfare reports on evacuation was often seen in suggestions that the relationship between poverty, poor health, and lack of cleanliness was caused by the irresponsibility and
feeblemindedness of the poor.
from "
feeblemindedness" and "psychopathy" to "delinquency" and "hypersexuality."); on the role of eugenic jurisprudence in other Progressive era reform movements, see Mary Ziegler, Eugenic Feminism." Mental Hygiene, The Women's Movement, and the Campaign for Eugenic Legal Reform, 31 HARV.
Well into the twentieth century, eugenicist thinking subjected African Americans to vague definitions of
feeblemindedness as the rationalization for policing their bodies.
After all, just about anything could be classified as mental retardation, or "
feeblemindedness." And woe betide the doctor whose patient bore an imperfect child; better to sterilize too many individuals than too few.
Yet, they supported the pseudo-science of eugenics and engaged in a war against "
feeblemindedness," especially targeted at African-Americans and immigrants.
Some states additionally passed legislation restricting the ability of people with
feeblemindedness and other disabilities to marry, and many early supporters of birth control also touted this as a method of eugenic control (Sanger, 1922).
One of the many facets of a patient's life that was considered by the Board was "family history." The core premise of the eugenics movement was that "
feeblemindedness" and other psychiatric disorders had a genetic basis.
Eugenics--defined in 1883 by English scientist Sir Francis Galton as "improving the quality of the stock" (33)--purported that certain socially undesirable characteristics, such as criminality, poverty, and "
feeblemindedness," (34) had a genetic basis and advocated the elimination of those so-called genetic defects.
(26) See, e.g., Ramsey, supra note 16, at 126-28 (discussing defenses based on women's supposed irrationality and weakness in late nineteenth-century New York and Colorado); see also Coughlin, supra note 18, at 28-42 (comparing BWS to such nineteenth-century excuses as the marital coercion defense, which presumed a married woman who committed a crime did so under her husband's coercion and which was grounded in psychological theories about women's
feeblemindedness).
In Oklahoma, the measure signed by governor "Alfalfa Bill" Murray in 1931 sought to sterilize all persons housed in facilities supported by public funds, including asylums and prisons, who were "afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity" as well as "idiocy, imbecility,
feeblemindedness, or epilepsy." These legal abominations, according to Victoria F.
