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75 This chapter is based on an extensive study of photographs that appeared in eugenicists’ writings in the period from 1900 to 1930 (Elks 1992). The sources cited show that some pictures come from texts published in Great Britain. Eugenicists abroad shared both US eugenicists’ perspectives and their clinical texts. The sources in this chapter do not include annual reports and other forms of institutional propaganda like those noted in chapter 5 on asylums. A more complete analysis and discussion of the research reviewed in this chapter can be found in Elks 1992. The eugenics era, a period covering approximately the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century, was a time when many medical and other professionals focused their attention on describing, explaining, photographing, and controlling classes of people they thought were responsible for most social problems. One such group of major concern encompassed those people labeled “feebleminded.”1 Roughly speaking, feeblemindedness was the general term used in the United States to describe conditions later referred to as “mental deficiency,” “mental retardation,” “intellectual disabilities,” and “developmental disabilities.”2 In the eugenics 1. The terminology used in this chapter reflects the clinical vocabulary used during the period. The term feebleminded was spelled two ways, with or without a hyphen after feeble. For histories of mental retardation in the United States, see Ferguson 1994, Trent 1994, Noll and Trent 2004. 2. The term feeblemindedness was used inconsistently . Although most professionals used it the way I am using it, others used it to refer only to people who were “higher-functioning mental defectives.” 6 Clinical Photographs “Feeblemindedness” in Eugenics Texts M a r t i n E l k s 6.1. “Case C. Cretinoid.” From Barr 1904, plate XXXVIII. 76  Picturing Disability era, it was widely believed that feeblemindedness was one of the root causes of crime, pauperism, dependency, alcoholism, prostitution, and other social ills.3 Eugenics was “the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding” (Davenport 1911, 1). Eugenicists believed that the major cause of intellectual disability was biological—heredity as well as inbreeding and disease, so they considered the best solution to the problem was to control who bred. They believed that feeblemindedness unchecked would reproduce so prolifically that society as a whole would degenerate. They advocated such practices as regulating the marriage of “undesirables,” strict immigration laws that would keep mentally deficient people out of the country, confinement of the feebleminded in institutions, and sterilization. Even euthanasia was suggested as a possible remedy (Hollander 1989; Elks 1993). Many of these ideas were widely held not only by professionals, but by the general public. By 1914, eugenics was taught at major universities such as Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and Brown (Chorover 1979). Exhibits extolling eugenics principles were common at state fairs, where families would be examined and trophies given to the “fittest families” in order to promote positive eugenics. Numerous books, journals, and associations were devoted to the public dissemination of eugenics’ ideas and policies. Prominent eugenics associations that flourished included the Eugenics Education Society, the American Breeder’s Association, and the Race Betterment Foundation. The destructive influence of the eugenics era on the lives of persons with intellectual disability then 3. One eugenicist who was the leader in the field of intellectual disability, the psychologist Henry Goddard, showed his contempt for people with feeblemindedness when he stated: “The feebleminded person is not desirable, he is a social encumbrance, often a burden to himself. In short it were better both for him and for society had he never been born” (1914, 558; for another statement like this one, see Barr 1904, 102). and now cannot be downplayed (see M. Haller 1963; Ludmerer 1972; Kevles 1985; Ferguson 1994; Carlson 2001). And photography played an important role in promoting eugenics ideas and policies. The photos in this chapter appeared in eugenics texts and articles written by experts in mental deficiency and represent the embodiment of their beliefs about the cause and clinical dimensions of feeblemindedness. I refer to these images as “clinical photographs” in that they were produced by clinicians to describe various aspects of the clinical condition they referred to as “feeblemindedness.” Armed with theories of degeneracy, genetic inheritance, intellectual disability, and intelligence testing, eugenicists led the crusade to seek out the feebleminded in order to control them and their reproduction (Davies 1930). Disability professionals took on the mandate of studying them as well as popularizing theories about the dangers...

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