Forgotten Children

Forgotten Children

National Mental Health Foundation

Eugenics

Pamphlets

This fundraising brochure from the National Mental Health Foundation makes a plea for compassion, better care, and education of the feeble-minded and sharply criticizes the family studies of the eugenics movement: “More than a generation ago considerable alarm was spread by studies and theories which led people to fear that civilization was being ‘swamped’ due to the excessive rate of reproduction among the feebleminded. ‘Royal lines of degeneracy’ were traced in the families of the Kallikaks, the Pineys, and Jukes and others with the conclusion that feebleminded traits were as definitely inherited as color of hair and eyes. People became further alarmed when they were told how poverty, illegitimacy, crime and other social evils were in the train of this group. The word ‘menace’ was used to describe the threat of feeblemindedness to human welfare and progress.”

Cover and 2 page excerpt from "Forgotten Children," a pamphlet released by the National Mental Health Foundation concerning "feeble-minded" individuals

National Mental Health Foundation

the Foundation

1946, circa

Papers of Clarence J. Gamble, 1920-1966 (bulk). H MS c23, box 246

text

excerpt (3 pages)

English

text

0002115

0002116

Gift of Sarah Merry Bradley Gamble and the Gamble Family to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1970