feeble-mindedness

In 1910, Charles Davenport, a Harvard-educated zoologist, established the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island The office surveyed families to study the heredity of attributes, among them “feeble-mindedness,” criminality and alcoholism.

“What about mental conditions: feeble-mindedness, insanity, psychopathic personality, epilepsy, narcotic drug addiction, chronic alcoholism?”

Goddard’s proposed cure to the nation’s feeble-mindedness was widely implemented.

When Agathe’s husband writes to say that he can understand her need for a divorce only as a sign of feeble-mindedness, she feels thoroughly undermined and considers suicide.

No, there was nothing wrong with her mentally, and because these feeble-mindedness hearings—they didn’t really know what feeble-mindedness was, and it was just done very quickly.