Each person here belongs to one of two classes. Either you have one of these unhappy beings in your own immediate circle, or you have not. If you have, you can feel all the more for those who are similarly afflicted with yourselves, but have not your means for mitigating their dire distress, and you will think of the narrow home of the humble artisan or labourer, rendered intolerable by the constant presence of one of these afflicted members of our race. If, on the other hand, you have been spared this overwhelming calamity in your own family, and have had the joy of watching the dawn of infant intelligence, and have experienced the delight of seeing the capacities shown in the early life of your own children gradually ripen and develop into the intelligence of manhood, you will look with an eye of pity on the numerous households rendered miserable by the intolerable incubus of the presence in their midst of an idiot child, and will, I am sure, consider any assistance you can render to so good a cause in the light of a thank-offering.
The wear and tear of an excitable idiot child has wrecked many a family and reduced it to pauperism, for not only is such child a dead weight on the material prosperity of the family, but the hands of those who have to work for their livelihood, are sadly tied and hampered, when such an inmate has to be constantly looked after in the home; the labour by which the household is supported is often interrupted by one who can contribute nothing to the common stock, and the time which is so precious to hard-working people must, in part at all events, be occupied in caring for the one, who, if uncared for and neglected, must sink lower in the social scale and fall into a still more degraded condition. The care and treatment of the idiot, therefore, becomes a vital question of Political Economy; for by relieving a household of the burden and anxiety incident to the care of the afflicted child, the parents are enabled to devote all their energies to the support of their family. Moreover, there is often a moral aspect corresponding with the mental aspect of this question, and the presence of an idiot often becomes a source of real danger. Our able superintendent, Mr. Turner, in his interesting report for the year 1895, has illustrated the terrible anxiety caused by the presence of an idiot child in the homes of the poor, by the history of an inmate of our Asylum, who, when at home, being left to mind the baby, blacked its face all over with soot, so that when his mother returned, she might think she had a black baby. On another occasion, his little sister wanted some water, and he told her to drink out of the kettle on the fire, by which she nearly lost her life. This boy, who was evidently a type of the mischievous class of idiots, was once turned out of the Parish Church during service, for pricking another boy with a pin, so that he yelled out and disturbed the whole congregation. Two cases of murder by idiots have been recorded in a report of the Commissioners on Idiocy to the General Assembly of Connecticut; an idiot girl, being left alone with an infant, killed it by striking it on the head with a flat iron; and another vicious idiot killed a man who was working with him, by striking him on the head with a shovel. Esquirol also records the case of an idiot in the Salzburg Hospital, who killed a man by severing his head from his body with a hatchet, and then calmly seated himself by the side of the dead body.[55]
Philanthropists of the Eastern Counties of England, many of you have been long accustomed to sympathise with suffering and want; here is another outlet for your charitable efforts. The most illustrious landowner in East Anglia has recently extended his Royal patronage to this institution, especially established for the care of idiots from the four counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Cambridgeshire; and his Royal Consort the Princess of Wales has most graciously consented to accept the position of Patroness of the Ladies' Association, thus showing the deep interest that is felt by their Royal Highnesses in this important Eastern Counties' Charity. I ask you to follow their noble example; I ask you to come and help us in our attempts to rescue a large section of the human family from the worse than Cimmerian darkness in which they have been hitherto enshrouded; come and help us to awaken faculties hitherto dormant, to restore lost minds, to arouse these unhappy beings from a moral death to a new birth of perception and feeling; come and help us in arousing the slumbering power to utterance, and you shall hear the once silent tongue eloquent with the outgushings of a liberated spirit.
In conclusion, I wish to reiterate and to emphasise the statement, that these unfortunate members of the human family possess the tripartite nature of man—body, soul, and spirit—σωμα, ψυχη, πνευμα; they have the germ of intellectual activity and of moral responsibility, and this germ, cherished and nourished by the genial warmth of human kindness, fenced round and protected from the blasts and buffetings of the world by the cords of true philanthropy, watered by the dew of human sympathy, although possibly only permitted to bud here, is destined hereafter to expand into a perfect flower, and flourish perennially in another and a better state of being.
"Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks. All these are but the shattered stalks Or ruined chrysalis of one."
INDEX.
- Affleck, Dr., [93]
- Alcoholic stimulants as a factor in the genesis of idiocy, [26]
- abuse of, in Sweden, [29]
- effects of, in France, [31]
- Sir B.W. Richardson on, [30]
- Anæmia, as the result of thyroid feeding, [97]
- Anderson, Mrs. Garrett, on Sex in Education, [37]
- Andriessen, on the cerebral convolutions of idiots, [51]
- Animals, relation between their intelligence and the size of their brain, [49]
- Association of idiots with the insane, a disadvantage to both classes, [19]
- Aveyron, the savage of the, [18]
- Beach, Fletcher, [25], [27], [28]
- Besant, Sir Walter, [76]
- Birth, injuries of the head at, [48]
- Blood, analysis of, in thyroid feeding, [96]
- supply of, varies in the two sexes, [37]
- Bourneville, on Craniectomy, [101]
- Brain, average weight of, in men and women, [46]
- chemistry of the, [52]
- difference between that of a senior wrangler and that of an idiot, [43]
- difference in the two sexes, [37]
- microscopical appearance of, in idiots, [51]
- of gorilla and ourang-outang, [75]
- size and weight, in proportion to intellectual power, [43]
- structure of, in men of genius, [44]
- Bramwell, Byrom, [93], [98]
- Browne, Sir J. Crichton, on Sex in Education, [36]
- Browne, Sir Thomas, [79]
- Bruce, Lewis C., on thyroid feeding, [95]
- Burton-Fanning, [94]
- Caird, Mrs. Mona, [39]
- Causes of idiocy, [23]
- Cicero, [69]
- Classification, [17]
- Consanguine marriages, [32]
- Convolutions of the brain in men of genius, and in those of low culture, [45]
- in idiots, [51]
- Couerbe, on the rôle of phosphorus in the brain, [52]
- Craniectomy, [101]
- statistics of, [103]
- Cranium, early closure of the sutures of, [101]
- Cranium, form of the, and its connection with idiocy, [43]
- Cross, Lord, on habitual drunkards, [31]
- Crossley House, [107]
- Cuvier, brain of, [46]
- Dahl, Ludwig, [25], [29]
- Dana, on Craniectomy, [102]
- Definition of idiocy, [15]
- Dunlop, [93]
- Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society, discussion at, [92]
- Educational Overpressure, on, [35]
- has induced suicide in children, [41]
- Esquirol, [85], [118]
- Faculty a, must not be confounded with its material organ, [63]
- Forceps, use of, as a cause of idiocy, [48]
- Fraser, Professor, anæmia following thyroid feeding, [97]
- Frere, Bartle, [20]
- Froude, [77]
- Gambetta, the brain of, [46]
- Genius, a neurosis, [53]
- its relation to cerebral structure, [44]
- Goethe, [69]
- Greenfield, Professor, [93]
- Gynagogues, [40]
- Hammond, G.M., [93]
- Hammond, Prof. W.A., [49], [60]
- Heredity, its rôle in idiocy, [25]
- Horsley, Victor, Prof., [90], [100]
- Howe, [26], [33]
- Humphry, Sir George, on Craniectomy, [102]
- Idiocy, causes of, [23]
- classification of, [17]
- definition of, [15]
- its bearing on Evolution, [72]
- moral aspect of, [117]
- pathological anatomy of, [43]
- should not be confounded with insanity, [19]
- social aspect of, [116]
- Idiot, the, description of, [22]
- his association with the insane a disadvantage, [19]
- his claims on society, [12], [114]
- phosphorus in the brain of, [52]
- possesses the tripartite nature of man, [120]
- Intellectual differences between men and women, [36]
- Intemperance of parents, a factor in idiocy, [26]
- Ireland, W.W., [18], [25], [34], [42], [47], [90], [103]
- Janet, Paul, on phosphorus in the brain, [53]
- Kerlin, [27]
- Kirkby, [91]
- Kocher, [90]
- Ladies' Association, [108]
- Langdon-Down, [17], [30], [33], [48]
- Lassaigne, [53]
- Lelut, on the cranium of idiots, [44]
- Lewes, G.H., [63]
- Lewi, [93]
- Lunatic Asylums, not adapted for idiots, [19]
- Lundie, [93]
- Lunier, [31]
- Luys, on the brain of idiots, [51]
- Lynn Linton, Mrs., on women's sphere of usefulness, [38]
- Massachussetts report on idiocy, [26]
- Matter and mind, [55]
- Mierzejewski, on the brain of idiots, [58]
- Millard, W., [78]
- Mind, independent of its material organ, [66]
- Mingazzini, on the cerebral convolutions, [44]
- Moleschott, [52]
- Moreau, on hereditary predisposition, [25]
- his ideas on genius, [53]
- Murray, G., [90], [93]
- New York Academy of Medicine, discussion at, [93]
- Norway, prevalence of idiocy in, [28]
- Odium theologicum, [73]
- Parental intemperance, [27]
- Parker, Rushton, [99]
- Pathological anatomy of idiocy, [43]
- Permanent Endowment Fund, [82]
- Phosphorus, its relation to intellectual vigour, [52]
- Plato, [22], [64]
- Pneuma, an attribute of the idiot, [71]
- Psychological Congress in Paris, [58]
- Richardson, Sir B.W., on the effects of alcohol, [30]
- Saeger, [87]
- Schiff, [90]
- Science and Theology should not be antagonistic, [74]
- Séguin, [15], [35]
- Sex in Education, on, [36]
- Shakespeare, his definition of idiocy, [15]
- Shuttleworth, [28], [33], [50], [87]
- Sidney, [80]
- Strahan, [41]
- Sweden, alcoholic abuse in, [31]
- Telford-Smith, on sporadic cretinism, [99]
- Thomson, J., [93], [99]
- Thucidides, [21]
- Thyroid feeding, [90]
- psychical effects of, [100]
- Toussenel, [29]
- Toxic idiocy, [28]
- Treatment of idiocy, [81]
- medico-pedagogic, [102]
- satisfactory results of, at the Eastern Counties' Asylum, [88]
- Trousseau, on consanguine marriages, [35]
- Turner, J.J. C., [33], [117]
- Vacherot, [58]
- Voisin, Auguste, [51], [95]
- Wagner, [45]
- Westcott, [41]
- Westfelt, on the influence of alcohol on progeny and race, [31]
- Wilbur, [28]
- Wilmath, [44]
- Winn, [67]