The Kallikak family : a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness

The Kallikak family : a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness

Goddard, Henry Herbert, 1866-1957 (author)

Eugenics

Frontispieces (illustrations)

Title pages

Kallikak, Deborah

Henry Herbert Goddard’s study, The Kallikak family, tracks 480 descendants of Martin Kallikak, known as the “Old Horror,” the illegitimate son of a feeble-minded girl. Among the descendants were alcoholics, prostitutes, epileptics, criminals, illegitimate children, and children who died in infancy. As Goddard states, “The surprise and horror of it all was that no matter where we traced them, whether in the prosperous rural district, in the city slums to which some had drifted, or in the more remote mountain regions, or whether it was a question of the second or the sixth generation, an appalling amount of defectiveness was everywhere found.” Legitimate Kallikak descendants, however, proved to be prosperous and upright citizens.

Title page and frontispiece of The Kallikak family : a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness by Henry Herbert Goddard. The frontispiece is a 1912 photo of Deborah Kallikak.

Goddard, Henry Herbert, 1866-1957

Macmillan

1912

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Boston Medical Library Rare Books Collection (2.G.55)

Full text available online here through the Medical Heritage Library

text

1 frontispiece and 1 title page

English

text

0001940

Purchased for the Boston Medical Library, 1913