What Minnesota Has Done and Should Do for the Feeble-Minded

Abstract

In 1879 the State of Minnesota established a commission to visit hospitals for the insane for the purpose, among other things, of selecting idotic and feeble-minded persons to be transferred from the hospitals and placed under the control of the institution for the deaf, dumb, and blind at Fairbault. The trustees of that institution were authorized to establish an experimental for training such patients, and an appropriation of $11,000 was made available for the years 1879 and 1880. In 1881 the beginning of our present school for the feeble-minded was authorized by the legislature as a Department for Training Imbeciles. The growth and development of the school, which began with less than a hundred patients to its present size and usefulness, with a population of 1,664, is familiar history. Minnesota has often been congratulated for its early recognition of the problem of feeble-mindedness. From 1879 to 1917 the ccurse of legislation has been on the side of developing the school-increasing its physical accommodations-the addition of a farm colony-in 1909 the establishment of the highly important and valuable research department. The legislation of 1917 marks the beginning of a new state policy with respect to the feeble-minded. As that legislation has been operative for a year it seems worth while at this time to consider its purposes and results. The new law provides for compulsory commitment of feebleminded persons to the care and custody of the State Board of Control. Heretofore it has been impossible to place feeble-minded persons under state care so long as they or their parents or guardians objected. Admission to the school at Faribault was voluntary and the length of detention a matter of the will of the patient or of those in authority over him. Manifestly the well-being of the community required permanent control by the community of those who, because of mental defect, are a menace and a constant source of actual and potential danger. The principle is so well recognized where crime and insanity are concerned, that one is at a loss to explain the delay in applying it to the feeble-minded. The terms of our present law constitute a complete