I. v. Vivo.
R. Dupuy.Medicine and Eugenics43
A HEALTHY SANE FAMILY SHOWING LONGEVITY IN
CATALONIA. (Abstract.)
By Professor I. Valenti Vivo.
I. A healthy family showing longevity in Catalonia : the greater part of
them died over 60 years of age from acute sickness. All belonged to the
districts of Barcelona and Gerona. A record of their ability in medical
science, art and agriculture, their average fertility.
II. Communication on Biometrika: Licentiates in medical science, 50
scholars, 1910: 70 in 1912. Dates: Cephalic index, stature, span,
dynamometer, age, district.
SOME REMARKS ON BACKWARD CHILDREN.
(Abstract.)
By Dr. Raoul Dupuy.
When we speak of a backward child, we mean any subject which is arrested
or retarded more or less completely in its bodily, psychical, and sensorial
evolution, in consequence of congenital and acquired lesions, or simply in con
sequence of physiological troubles, which concern, either at the same or a
different time, the brain and the glands of internal secretion (the thyroid, the
hypophysis, the suprarenals, and the genital glands). The cerebral lesions,
practically incurable in the present state of science, produce “atropic back
wardness ” the functional troubles of the brain, or those caused by the glands
of internal secretion, which can be modified by “ combined organotherapy ”
produce dystrophic backwardness. We also, however, find mixed types, half
of the one and half of the other, which are similarly susceptible of improve
ment. The number, and above all the variety of the types of dystrophic
backwardness, makes a general classification of them impossible. The study
of their bodily, psychical and sensorial anomalies proves that in most of the
manifestations of backwardness and immaturity, these children present
perversions of evolution which have a common bearing on the development of
body, mind and spirit Although apparently different from one another, these
backward persons, whether the mischief be corporal, psychical or sensorial,
show pathological peculiarities, which prove that the cause of their various
dystrophies have a similar origin, and that they often arise from defective
function of the sympathic system which appears to be brought into action by
the internal glands. The backward children consist of intoxicated, under
grown or anaemic persons, who, besides, suffer from retention of substances,
