Social pathology

“ Later, the anti-social man was regarded as a pathological product—the victim of disease; and it is one of the fashions of to-day to regard him as 'a social product'—the victim of adverse social environment. ”

“ The problem of abnormality—crime, vagabondage, prostitution, alcoholism, etc. How far is abnormality the unavoidable manifestation of inborn tendencies of the individual, and how far is it a matter of deficient social organization,—the failure of institutional influences? There is a quantitative difference of efficiency between individuals, but if there is hardly a human attitude which if properly controlled and directed could not be used in a socially useful and productive way, must there remain a permanent qualitative difference between socially normal and anti-social actions? ”

“ It is because of each and all of these imperfect realisations of our civic life, that the evils of life sink down, or flame out, into these complex eruptions of social evils with which our human aggregations are as yet cursed.
Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of being viewed together, and largely even treated together. ”

“ Every form of social ill roots itself in these mind disorders. Since this great burden seems to be increasing as a result of the conditions of present-day living, it is not strange that those most familiar with the situation are seriously alarmed. ”

“ They came openly, frankly and ready to stand the consequences, ready to give their own lives.
In diagnosing the true nature of our social disease I cannot condemn those who, through no fault of their own, are suffering from a wide-spread malady. ”

“ The disease inherent in her being, that deadly outcome of social tyranny which perverts the generous elements of youth into mere seeds of destruction, developed day by day, blighting her heart, corrupting her moral sense, even setting marks of evil upon the beauty of her countenance. ”

“ And so it is not absurd to suggest that one of those things which once made jests for the comic paper and the Victorian paterfamilias has, little by little, with the spread of wealth, become a problem of the day, a problem profound and menacing, full of intimations of social decay, not far remote in its reactions from the spread of a disease. ”

“ And this makes it very evident that the science which is principally, if not exclusively, engaged in studying these phenomena of social disease, should feel the necessity of finding a more exact diagnosis of these moral diseases of society, in order to arrive at some effective and more humane remedy, which should more victoriously combat this somber trinity of insanity, suicide and crime. ”

“ Notwithstanding this remarkable power of vitality, which can brave such extreme variations in physical conditions and endure enormous privations, careful observation all over our country presents a fearful record of death, sickness, and physical degeneration produced by our own social arrangements—arrangements and habits so destructive to the human organization that they overpower even this great capability of adaptation. ”

“ Such personal causes as mental defect are extremely important, indeed, many students maintain that bad economic and social conditions are negligible causes of crime, unless found in connection with low mentality and a depraved moral sense. ”

“ It is a sign that in the existing situation some one or more of the four wishes—security, new experience, recognition, and response—has not been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the group where the unrest manifests itself. ”

“ Also, whereas, to a certain extent, we know whence bodily disorders arise, moral disorders come of faulty education, the thousand and one follies with which the human brain is afflicted, in short, any irregular condition of the social body. ”

“ Similarly, since the “laboring classes” feel most the growing healthful pain of their position, they as naturally revolt under the same conviction. Sociologically, these conditions, which some find so painful and alarming, mean but one thing,—the increase of social consciousness. ”

“ Some of the most important and serious problems which confront humanity to-day lie in the realm of mental and neural maladjustments. For human progress and social welfare are in last analysis based fundamentally on the results of normal reactions of human nervous systems. Any serious derangement of the latter may, and in certain cases must, lead to more or less disaster for the individual and disorder for society of which he is a unit. ”

“ Maybe it is just a commonplace, every-day story of a room full of school children, 22 per cent of them undernourished, as is the case in New York City, and the parents out of work a part of the time, and with no possibility in their lives of ever earning enough to feed the children properly. When you confront these universal facts of our present social order, you realize that the problem of disease is not merely a problem of the body, but is a problem of the mind as well; a problem of politics and religion and philosophy, of the whole way of thinking of the so-called civilized world. ”

“ At the other end of the scale, we have the parasitic class of the beggars or thieves. They, too, are not personally responsible for the conditions into which they are born. But they are not only to be pitied individually, but to be regarded, in the mass, as involving social disease and danger. ”

“ So a good social diagnosis will name many misfortunes of mind, body, and estate, healed wounds of the spirit that have left their scar, ossifications, degenerations, contagious crazes which the person has caught, deformities which he has acquired. ”

“ For we must not lose sight of two things: first, that the bad germs that show themselves in our present society are the anti-social instincts, opposed to the sociability and sympathy upon which life is based, while the good germs are the social instincts ”

“ In the downward course of mental disease-processes the degeneration is from the complex to the simple, from the stable to the unstable, from the highly organized to the lowly organized. In the different forms of mental diseases first the moral life, then the social instincts become affected, the patient becomes selfish, introspective, morally selfish, then loses all regard for others, becomes careless, wasteful and negligent of his vocations, life-work, and duties ”

“ The hysteria of repression will probably subside, but it is now a well-recognized fact that in disease, whether organic or mental, the abnormal and excessive are but instructive exaggerations and perversions of the usual course of things. ”

“ Hence, the extreme eccentric errors are the consequence of diseases and far-reaching social imperfections which lead to genuine deviations from the normal, including pathological and degenerate malformations, and associated with them the lowest forms of individual degradation, both intellectual and moral. ”

“ When we remember the conditions under which the vast mass of servants have grown up, the exposures and privations of their homes, their undeveloped mental state in relation to social duties, the exhausting work upon which the majority of them enter in hotels, lodging-houses, struggling households, or the special danger of rich, careless establishments, and realize both the condition under which their service drags on and the natural instincts of the human being, then it is easy to understand why to a frightfully increasing extent they yield to the solicitations to which they are exposed. ”

“ Nevertheless these abnormalities may constitute a very grave hindrance to the general development and mental health of the individual and, in the case of the displacement of very intense affects, may give rise to consequences of a distinctly pathological order; while, on their more sublimated side, they have contributed much to some of the most important aspects of social life and culture. ”

“ We would, therefore, as far as the hardships of the human lot are concerned, go on struggling to the best of our ability against them but for the social doctors, and we would endure what we could not cure. But we have inherited a vast number of social ills which never came from Nature. They are the complicated products of all the tinkering, muddling, and blundering of social doctors in the past. These products of social quackery are now buttressed by habit, fashion, prejudice, platitudinarian thinking, and new quackery in political economy and social science. ”

“ So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or [29] moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? ”

“ There seems good proof that a few millions of men and women are bringing misery upon the rest because they are treated as unworthy of social consideration. Medical men are saying that the disease which is undermining the health of the nation is dangerous only because it is shameful. ”

“ These sufferings—at least in their more tangible forms—fall almost wholly upon the poorer classes, while the richer get a larger share of the increased product which the progress brings. By sufferings I mean not only the physical hardship and liability to disease, early decay, and mutilation or death by accident, which fall to the hand-worker; but also the debasement of children by premature and stunting labor, the comparative lack of intellectual and social opportunities, the ugly and discouraging surroundings, and the insecurity of employment, to which he and his are subject. ”

“ And it is a self-evident fact that nothing will27 render human existence so miserable and short as social destitution, bringing, as a matter of consequence, mental pressure or anxiety of mind. Even comparative want is prejudicial to physical health. ”

“ The disease and the crime below are to the social community what pain is to the individual, and just as the special senses become more highly organized and sensitive as the nervous system becomes more highly developed, so as the civilization of the community intensifies does the public conscience awaken to forms of mischief and crime in one generation that were unsuspected in a previous one. So social evils become intolerable and finally are removed. How then are we employing our knowledge as to the causation of disease to the public problem of its removal or abatement? ”

“ Civilization, on the other hand, tends more and more towards the preservation of psychopathic individuals. We no longer kill our sick and our weak, nor do we abandon them to a miserable, painful death,—we take care of them, and cure them. Moreover, [274] we prevent pathogenic factors from exercising a harmful, malign social selection of the “fit.” We do our best to free ourselves from the blind, merciless, purposeless selection, produced by pathogenic micro-organisms and by other noxious agencies. We learn to improve the external environment. ”

“ Aptitudes that are very normal physiologically, may be employed for acts that are equally normal physiologically, but which, from a social point of view are classed as abnormal, because contrary to the social prosperity. Yet this is an abuse of the word ‘abnormal’, because society as at present constituted is, in its normal functioning, consistent with innumerable causes of conflict between its own interests and those of individuals. ”

“ Examinations now keep daltonic gentlemen out of locomotives, and ladies who have lost their “keys” are apt to find their friends’ pianos closed. What we cannot guard against is a variety of the genus homo which suffers from “social color-blindness.” These well-meaning mortals form one of the hardest trials that society is heir to; for the disease is incurable, and as it is almost impossible to escape from them, they continue to spread dismay and confusion along their path to the bitter end. ”

“ With adults, the beneficial influences of fresh air, good food, well-built houses, open spaces, and healthy conditions of labour have become common-places of sociology. In every rational biography attention is paid to the formative influences of parents, friends, and general environment. Medical men seek the cause of frames of mind in nervous structure, and predisposition to physical, mental, and moral disease in heredity. Statisticians point to absolute uniformity of general human action under certain social conditions. Moralists point to the power of ideals on people's minds. ”

“ It will be within the scope of such a foundation to investigate and study the causes of adverse social conditions, including ignorance, poverty and vice, to suggest how these conditions can be remedied or ameliorated, and to put in operation any appropriate means to that end. ”

“ In recent times 310 members of this family have been studied, and it is found that vagrancy, feeble-mindedness, mental troubles, criminality, pauperism, immorality are, as it may be termed, their patrimony. [37]
These classes, with their tendency to weak-mindedness, their inborn laziness, lack of vitality, and unfitness for organized activity, contain the people who complain that they are starving for want of work, though they will never perform any work that is given them. [43] Feeble-mindedness is an absolute dead-weight on the race. It is an evil that is unmitigated. ”