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The author has covered the various types found in groups of mental defectives in institutions, clinics, and in private practice, including a study of the treatment and training of special nature available for all levels of intellectual development, as well as an estimation of the trainability in such cases.
At the start he declares: 'What is never absent, however, is mental deficiency … mongolism cannot exist without mental deficiency'. This is a refreshing pronouncement in the face of the fact that parents are still promised 'cures' through 'head measurements', 'glandular treatments' and even 'shock therapy'.
A brief postcript is a forceful statement for the acceptance of a new terminology with abandonment of the traditional allusion to the Mongolian race, and use, instead, of the term, Peristatic Amentia, 'the total of all the harmful factors acting on the ovary and the uterus, particularly, however, on the uterus'. The closing sentence contains the stimulating suggestion that 'it might be worth while to review the whole problem of mental deficiency and idiocy in the light of peristatic damage'.
This book is constructively documented and represents the best objective appraisal of this particularly dramatic type of mental defective that has ever been compiled.