Among the gravest dangers threatening the human race is the danger of mental illnesses and their wide spread in our present day. In my talk tonight I shall try to disclose to you some of the regrettable facts and figures which the specialists have arrived at concerning mental illnesses, and which I see today threatening the civilized world.

I believe in the biological force residing in mankind, which will inevitably overcome mental weakness when the human mind begins its steady advance, until it succeeds at last in triumphing over mental weakness and reaching a good result compared with the present state. But this requires time and patience.

I am sorry to say that this natural defense against mental illnesses is not active in our age; indeed, its course is even reversed. These conclusions are not from our reports — we specialist physicians — but from the reports of the mathematicians, who study our experiments and our personal reports on the insane, draw their conclusions from them, and impose them upon us; and we in turn, compelled, broadcast them to the civilized world — would that it were in our power to better them.

The decisive conclusion on which the mathematicians ("Mathematician") have agreed, as the outcome of our studies and our mental reports, is that these illnesses are in steady increase, that the intelligence of mankind in general grows weaker day by day, and that the children born feeble-minded double in number every twenty years. Twenty years from today — if the mathemati-cians' claim is correct, and there is no justification for calling them liars — the number of those who come to hear a lecture such as this will be half what it is today, while the other half will be busied with trivial concerns, for it will have declined mentally and will no longer have the endurance to listen to a scientific lecture that demands thought.

Since the situation is so grave that the number of those afflicted with mental illnesses will double every twenty years, it has become imperative for us to hasten to

avert the danger and decide our fate before the adversary crowds us out and we, or our children after us, become victims of this terrible disease.

England claims — and its claim may well be true — that the proportion of the mentally sound among its sons is the highest pro-portion in the world; yet even so, the number of the feeble-minded counted in its hospitals shortly before the last war reached 160,000, and their number was increasing at the rate of 16,000 cases every year. Statistics on this subject have not been published since the beginning of the war, but it is known that the number of the afflicted has approximately doubled from what it was before the war. In 1939 the number of the feeble-minded in the hospitals of Scotland reached 20,000. These figures do not include those born feeble-minded, but are confined to those stricken with imbecility as adults... And there are today in England 600,000 children afflicted with mental deficiency — a proportion of ten percent (10%) of the number of children in England. And this number is in steady increase.

The figures of the United States are no less grave than these. The number of the feeble-minded in the government hospitals for mental illnesses reached, in 1938, 500,000 patients, and the number was increasing at the rate of 16,000 every year. As for the number of children born with a touch of insanity, it has not been counted exactly, but it exceeds a million.

As for the East, the number of the insane and the rate of their yearly increase are no less calamitous than they are in the West. I incline to believe they are greater, for this disease embraces the whole world without exception, and there is not a single nation that can claim a natural immunity against it.

The time has come for us to declare openly that the number of persons who fall short of mental soundness is in constant increase, and if this increase continues at the present rate, it is not unlikely that in the near future the number of the simple-minded will overrun the

number of the sane. I can almost hear you saying to me and to physi-cians like me who specialize in this disease: "What are you doing about this invasion? And if mental medicine has advanced greatly, as you claim, why do you not cure this ill-starred class?" My answer to this is that we do cure these insane, always; we cure them by the thousands and the millions. But the time has come for us to consult you in the matter and take your opinion as to whether we may go on curing this class and permitting it to return to society — to mingle, then to marry, then to breed?

We — the physicians — are not prepared to bear the responsibility and give our decision on the basis of medical systems; we wish the opinion to be yours, on the basis of social and moral systems.

Fifty years ago, a man stricken with a mental illness had scant hope of recovery, and if a report was given that he was insane, he was confined in a locked room for the whole of his life and was treated kindly in the insane asylum. Today the situation differs greatly from what it was then, and the man stricken with a mental illness is treated as a sick man — even in a state of frenzy, when the patient is dragged to the hospital by force, his hope of recovery is fifty percent (50%).

The modern methods of treat-ing the insane guarantee to more than a third of them a complete cure — and by complete cure we mean that the patient will no longer need to consult a mental physician or enter a hospital. But there is one thing on which the physicians can exert no influence, since they have no authority over it as yet — namely, hereditary predisposition, for many mental illnesses come by way of heredity. And when we cure individuals of their mental illnesses and send them out into society as free persons, they have full liberty to marry and to sow the world with weak-minded offspring... whereas fifty years ago this class spent the rest of its life in the insane asylum, and breeding was out of the question.

This is the regrettable truth, and this is the reality. Are we right or wrong in curing these insane? Are we right in curing them and returning them to their society as free persons, loading humanity with fresh calamities? Or would it be more fitting for us to keep these insane inside the hospitals and not set them at liberty until we have made certain of their sterilization