MENTAL HYGIENE AND MIGRATION.

MENTAL HYGIENE AND MIGRATION.

37 This typhus-like fever was confined almost tu those who lived on mouse-r’dden farms. Malayic. Anglo-American, Chaldaic, and Sinitic immigrants, an...

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37 This typhus-like fever was confined almost tu those who lived on mouse-r’dden farms.

Malayic. Anglo-American, Chaldaic, and Sinitic immigrants, and the Anglo-American, Tartaric. dealt with mouse-infested grain. Wheatland and American-Indian rank highest for those disorders ur concluded that it was probably transrnitted by some due to abnormal personal make-up. Mexican, Irish, ectoparasite of the mouse, Fletcher and Lesslar’s and German are the three races most often debarred original observatioas un non-contagious typhus, and for mental disorder at the immigrant examination. tlwir careful review of the literature, will now, it is The difficulties are great of forming an adequate hoped, meet with the reward such thorough work psychiatric opinion on the scanty data afforded by deserves—a sharper look-out in the tropics for a ship surgeon’s report and an interview with the continued fever with exanthem (the rash, they note, alien who is asserting his right to enter the country, is very easily missed in dark skins), and a quickened supported by his friends and relations. These interest in its aetiology. difficulties are the burden of the last three chapters of the report. The onus of proof is thrown on the but he is aided by the enormous mental doctor, MENTAL HYGIENE AND MIGRATION. stress involved in the examination on which the THE United States of America are unique in theimmigrant’s 9 fate hangs. The under-average and enormous number of foreigners who desire to enter unstable generally arouse suspicion in the preliminary the country ; during the first 22 years of this centuryinquiry, and are put back for further test. Few are the tale of immigrants was 18,000,000. Thusever certified without three complete examinations,. the Government has to face in an acute form theand any alien debarred by a board of special inquiry economic fact that the more the newcomers to any has the tight of appeal. A formidable machine, community the greater the number who will become largely sentimental in its origin, is set in motion to a charge on the public treasury. The departmentstay and land the excludable alien, and most interested in immigration is, naturally, thesubterfuges are often employed. Mentally disabled Public Health Service, for it has to bear the burden aliens may land on filing a bond providing against not only of caring for those immigrants who, unable their becoming public charges, and the war period to adapt themselves to their new environment, become produced a large crop of temporary landings that have mentally or physically ill, but also of many of the become permanent. As Dr. Treadway says, a method evil results of their presence among the existing has yet to be devised whereby the doubtful mentally population. Since 1891 it has been required by lawdisordered immigrant or the potential " misfit " will tu examine the physical and mental condition of be prevented from entering America. The need for arriving aliens, and its opinions carry great weight in it is shown by the high proportion of mental disease slzaping the policy of the Federal Government. In among foreign-born persons living in the United 1922 the Service began an exhaustive research into States. Transport companies could obtain su11icient the relationship between the migration of peoples data to enable them to refuse passage to such aliens and mental health, and the results of their preliminary as are most likely to become public charges or to be inquiries are set out in a pamphlet by Dr. Walter L. sent back at the expense of the coxnpany which brought Treadway,! who has had many years’ practical them. The Immigration Act of 192 j:, with its experience as a psychiatrist. penalties for the introduction of aliens suffering from In order to study foreign immigration from the frank disease, affords a starting-point. Dr. Treadway standpoint of mental health, Dr. Treadway fully points out that the cost of an adequate examination realises that it is necessary to know the methods service would not amount to the expense the companies adopted by communities to relieve distress. These I now incur in caring for detained and deported aliens. methods, though they evolve with time, are always He recommends that legislation should include a deeply ruoted in tradition and custom. He therefore clause binding the companies to support all aliens who traces the history of public relief from its beginnings become a charge on the public within five years of in mediaeval and Europe, through its develop- their landing, including repatriation and the proment in the early American settlements, to its present- vision of an attendant when necessary. Such an Act day forms in the States. In successive chapters he should certainly deter shipping companies from transoutlines the growth of workhouses, prisons, and porting aliens whose mental stability is reasonably reformatories, and the evolution of institutions for in doubt. the care of the insane and the mentally deficient, and discusses the early treatment and prevention of CHEMISTRY OF CARDIAC CONTRACTION. " mental disorder. In Glimpses of European AN of the right auricle of the dog’s heart Ethnogeny " he surveys the exceedingly complex exerts extract a isolated heart stimulating history of migrations in Europe, with the consequent muscle of the rabbit, effect on the increasing the amplitude of intermingling of language, folk-lore, and customs, the muscular contractions, accelerating the rhythm, and describes Dr. D. G. Brinton’s classification of even initiating contraction in muscle in a condiand races, on which is based that adopted by the Immigration Service in 1907. After this comes a detailed tion of standstill. This was shown by J. Demoor in 1923.’ More recently2 the same investigator has survey of immigration during the last ten decades and of the evolution of immigration laws. In con- made alcoholic extracts of different parts of the heart of the rabbit and tested their relative capabilities sidering the psychopathology of racial groups he in stimulating to increased mechanical response the that the stocks are more agrees with auricles of the same species. Extracts of isolated than other to intoxication prone any develop the sino-auricular nodal tissue, of the right auricular psychoses, the Irish ranking first in alcoholic disorders. The Malayic stock seem more liable to develop muscle, and of the left auricular muscle, were investitraumatic conditions, sharing with the Anglo- gated in this manner. The isolated right auricle of Americans the unenviable distinction of being more the rabbit beats rhythmically in a bath of oxygenated solution, and it was found that the addition likely to be sent to mental hospitals when not actually Locke’s of the extract of nodal tissue, and to a smaller extent insane than any other racial groups. Syphilitic exerted definitely brain disease is least of all in the Anglo-American, that of right auricular while ranking high among Indio-Eranic, Sinitic, positive inotropic and chronotropic influences on the auricular beats. An extract of left auricular muscle Xegritic, Lettic, Finnic, and Chaldaic stocks. The was The isolated left auricle of the without action. Teutons and (-’elts seem to specialise in mental disorders due to senile and cerebral arterial changes, rabbit shows infrequent irregular contractions when while Tartaric and Hellenic peoples head the list for placed in oxygenated Locke’s fluid, and it was found disorders associated with faulty mental adjustment. that the nodal tissue extract acted specifically on Mental disease, when it occurs, is most often benign this tissue, converting the spasmodic irregular responses into those of apparently normal rhythmic 1 Health Dept., P.H. Bulletin, No. 148, Mental U.S. Public Rend. Soc. de Biol., lxxxviii., 631. 1 Comptes Hygiene with Special Reference to the Migration of People. 2 Ibid., xci., 90; xciii., 814 and 1239. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 25 cents.

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