Feeble-minded

<h2 id="history">History</h2>
<p>The earliest recorded use of the term in the English language dates from 1534, when it appears in one of the first English translations of the <a href="/facts/New_Testament/k066sDIn">New Testament</a>, the <a href="/facts/Tyndale_Bible/pKz2vCjT">Tyndale Bible</a>.  A biblical commandment to "Comforte the feble mynded" is included in 1 Thessalonians.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a>
</p><p>A London <i><a href="/facts/The_Times/5BwkodnX">Times</a></i> <a href="/facts/Editorial/hu6eLfP2">editorial</a> of November 1834 describes the long-serving former <a href="/facts/Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom/Uf40UlBb">Prime Minister</a> <a href="/facts/Lord_Liverpool/gB0kY5E3">Lord Liverpool</a> as a "feeble-minded pedant of office".<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a>
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<h3>Schools of Feeble-minded</h3>
<p>For "feebleminded" children, which was a broad connotation of mental deficiency's, special day-schools were established in the 1900s to promote schoolings efficiency. These schools focused on "educable" learning-disabled children, which classified children into two categories: a child's <a href="/facts/Abnormality_(behavior)/TFpmvhMk">abnormality</a> - need for special education - and a child's ineducability.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a>
</p>
<h2 id="definition">Definition</h2>
<p>The British government's Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (1904–1908), in its <i>Report</i> in 1908 defined the feeble-minded as:
</p>
<p>[P]ersons who may be capable of earning a living under favourable circumstances, but are incapable from mental defect, existing from birth or from an early age: (1) of competing on equal terms with their normal fellows, or (2) of managing themselves and their affairs with ordinary prudence.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a></p>
<p>Despite being <a href="/facts/Pejorative/UId8vPsx">pejorative</a>, in its day the term was considered, along with <i><a href="/facts/Idiot_(usage)/yq2QL0Kt">idiot</a></i>, <i><a href="/facts/Imbecile/JEHG6mxg">imbecile</a></i>, and <i><a href="/facts/Moron_(psychology)/HUNk4BvQ">moron</a></i>, to be a relatively precise psychiatric classification.
</p><p>The <a href="/facts/United_States_of_America/P0sCdLe5">American</a> psychologist <a href="/facts/Henry_H._Goddard/Px8vvy57">Henry H. Goddard</a>, who coined the term <i><a href="/facts/Moron_(psychology)/HUNk4BvQ">moron</a></i>, and translated the <a href="/facts/Stanford%E2%80%93Binet_Intelligence_Scales/NmrJ18PB">Stanford-Binet intelligence test</a> into English,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a> was the director of the <a href="/facts/Vineland_Training_School/GJ79NSQH">Vineland Training School</a> (originally the Vineland Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children) at <a href="/facts/Vineland,_New_Jersey/DW6yVQ9I">Vineland, New Jersey</a>. Goddard was known for strongly postulating that "feeble-mindedness" was a hereditary trait, most likely caused by a single recessive gene. Goddard rang the <a href="/facts/Eugenics/e7w6aSUV">eugenic</a> "alarm bells" in his 1912 work, <i><a href="/facts/The_Kallikak_Family/h2jTBprF">The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness</a></i>, about those in the population who carried the recessive trait despite outward appearances of normality. 
</p><p>In the first half of the 20th century, a diagnosis of "feeble-mindedness, in any of its grades" was a common criterion for many states in the United States, which embraced eugenics as a progressive measure, to mandate the <a href="/facts/Compulsory_sterilization/3nxJMvV4">compulsory sterilization</a> of such patients. In the 1927 US Supreme Court case <i><a href="/facts/Buck_v._Bell/HqFrLGhQ">Buck v. Bell</a></i>, Justice <a href="/facts/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr./TdyLqzW3">Oliver Wendell Holmes</a> closed the 8–1 majority opinion upholding the sterilization of <a href="/facts/Carrie_Buck/Uod8IXlt">Carrie Buck</a>, with the phrase, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> Buck, her mother and daughter were all classified as feeble-minded.
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<h2 id="representation-in-other-media">Representation in other media</h2>
<p><a href="/facts/Jack_London/cBr75uTI">Jack London</a> published a short story, "Told in the Drooling Ward" (1914), which describes inmates at a California institution for the "feeble-minded".  He narrates the story from the point of view of a self-styled "high-grade feeb".  The California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-minded Children, later the <a href="/facts/Sonoma_Developmental_Center/dg1KKaL1">Sonoma Developmental Center</a>, was located near the Jack London Ranch in <a href="/facts/Glen_Ellen,_California/g37xH99X">Glen Ellen, California</a>.
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<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Eugenics_in_the_United_States/DRln1GSh">Eugenics in the United States</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Insanity/nNNuS8IU">Insanity</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Developmental_disorder/apNTmdtA">Developmental disorder</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>

Look up <i>feeble-minded</i> in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

<ul><li></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Jack_London/cBr75uTI">Jack London</a>. <i><a href="https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/16257">The Turtles of Tasman</a></i> at <a href="/facts/Project_Gutenberg/2l0R6GgQ">Project Gutenberg</a>, contains the story "Told in the Drooling Ward".</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>Jackson, Mark (1 December 1998). "'It begins with the goos and ends with the goose': medical, legal, and lay understandings of imbecility in Ingram v Wyatt, 1824–1832". Social History of Medicine. 11 (3): 364. doi:10.1093/shm/11.3.361. PMID 11623581. <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>Thomson, Mathew (1998). The Problem of Mental Deficiency : Eugenics, Democracy and Social Policy in Britain, c. 1870–1959 (Repr. ed.). Oxford: Clarendon. p. 14. ISBN 0-19-820692-5. <a href="0-19-820692-5" target="_blank">0-19-820692-5</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:3"><p>Bartley, Paula (2000). Prostitution prevention and reform in England, 1860–1914. London: Routledge. p. 121. ISBN 0-203-45303-4. <a href="0-203-45303-4" target="_blank">0-203-45303-4</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:4"><p>Bible (1534). William Tyndale (trans.); George Joye (revised). Thessalonians. Quoted in: "feeble, adj. and n.". OED Online. November 2010. Oxford University Press. 16 March 2011 <http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/68950>. <a href="http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/68950" target="_blank">http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/68950</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:5"><p>The Times, 8 November 1834; "A precious exposure of the dignity and integrity of Statesmen is about to be made this day by Mr. EVANS" <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:6"><p>Bakker, Nelleke (2 November 2021). "Professional competence and the classification and selection of pupils for schools for "feebleminded" children in the Netherlands (1900–1940)". Paedagogica Historica. 57 (6): 728–744. doi:10.1080/00309230.2020.1762681. ISSN 0030-9230. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00309230.2020.1762681" target="_blank">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00309230.2020.1762681</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:7"><p>Bartley, Paula (2000). Prostitution prevention and reform in England, 1860–1914. London: Routledge. p. 121. ISBN 0-203-45303-4. <a href="0-203-45303-4" target="_blank">0-203-45303-4</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:8"><p>Omori, Mariko (4 March 2018). "The discovery of feeblemindedness among immigrant children through intelligence tests in California in the 1910s". Paedagogica Historica. 54 (1–2): 221–235. doi:10.1080/00309230.2017.1411959. ISSN 0030-9230. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00309230.2017.1411959" target="_blank">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00309230.2017.1411959</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:9"><p>"Buck v. Bell 274 U.S. 200 (1927)". Justia Law. Retrieved 4 April 2017. <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/274/200/case.html" target="_blank">https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/274/200/case.html</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

Feeble-minded open-in-new

Feeble-minded