Wheeling Daily Intelligencer

It has been ascertained by careful investigation into the influence of marriages of consanguinity on offspring, that over ten per cent. of the blind, and nearly fifteen per cent. of the idiocy, in the various State institutions, or the subject of their defects are offspring of kindred parents. And making an estimate based upon the best ascertained data, there would be found to the twenty millions of white inhabitants in the United States, six thousand three hundred and twenty-one marriages of cousins, giving birth to three thousand nine hundred and nine deaf and dumb, blind, idiotic and insane.