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Edits made to the Feeble-minded Wikipedia article

History
'''The earliest recorded use of the term in the English language dates from 1534, when it appears in one of the first English translations of the New Testament, the Tyndale Bible. A biblical commandment to "Comforte the feble mynded" is included in 1 Thessalonians. '''

'A London Times'' editorial of November 1834 describes the long-serving former Prime Minister Lord Liverpool as a "feeble-minded pedant of office". '''

People that were diagnosed as feeble-minded, as well as other degrees of mental deficiency in the early 20th century, were evaluated based on the Binet Scale. This scale comes from the book The Development of Intelligence in Children, and there are a few different methods of coming to a diagnosis. The main methods that are used in the Binet scale are the Psychological method, the Medical Method, and the pedagogical method. (Kite 40) Each method serves to look at different aspects of a subject's intelligence. The Medical Method “aims to appreciate the anatomical, physiological and pathological signs of inferior intelligence” (Kite 40), the Pedagogical method “ “aims to judge of the intelligence according to the sum of acquired knowledge” (Kite 40), and the Psychological method “makes direct observations and measurements of the degree of intelligence.” (Kite 40).

I'''n the first half of the 20th century, a diagnosis of "feeble-mindedness, in any of its grades" was a common criterion for many states in the United States, which embraced eugenics as a progressive measure, to mandate the compulsory sterilization of such patients. In the 1927 US Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes closed the 8–1 majority opinion upholding the sterilization of Carrie Buck, with the phrase, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Buck, her mother and daughter were all classified as feeble-minded. (“Feebleminded”)'''

An example of how people classified as feebleminded were treated in early 20th century America can be seen in a report given by the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in 1914, where it was reported that Dr. Alfred Priddy held the opinion that sterilization of the “defective” people was not enough because “as is well known, though procreation cannot result from their actions, the sexual desire, which generally is abnormally great in them, is not diminished by the operation.” (Southern Medical Journal)

sources for edits: “REPORT OF VIRGINIA STATE EPILEPTIC COLONY.” Southern Medical Journal, vol. 7, no. 5, 1914, p. 426.

Fox, Evelyn. “The Feebleminded.” The Hospital, vol. 67, no. 1752, 1920, p. 314

Kite, Elizabeth Sarah, et al. The Development of Intelligence in Children: (the Binet-Simon Scale). United States, Williams & Wilkins, 1916.