[1] See an interesting article on Idiocy, by Dr. Langdon Down, "Quain's Dictionary of Medicine." Vol. I., p. 926.
[2] "Idiocy and Imbecility," by W.W. Ireland, M.D. P. 36.
[3] I am glad to find that this question of the depletion of our workhouses is engaging the attention of Boards of Guardians, as shown by a meeting lately held in Norwich, to consider the propriety of reducing the number of workhouses in the district. At this conference, which was attended by delegates from various unions, Mr. Bartle H.T. Frere stated that the Aylsham workhouse, originally built for 619 persons, had never had more than 117 inmates during the past eleven years; and that in other unions, not more than a quarter of the actual workhouse accommodation was utilized, although a complete staff of officials was kept in each union. Mr. Frere pointed out the folly of keeping up such elaborate machinery, for such totally inadequate results, and that an enormous saving would be effected by the amalgamation of two or more unions for the purpose of housing their pauper population.
[4] This term is applied by the Greek writers to a person unpractised or unskilled in anything—one who has no professional knowledge, whether of politics or any other subject, and it seems to have corresponded with our word layman; thus, Thucydides, in describing the plague that broke out at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, in speaking of a physician and a layman, uses the phrase ιατρος καἱ ἱσιωτης; Plato also uses the word in the same sense (Legg. 933 D), and the same author, in contrasting a poet with a prose-writer, uses the phrase, "εν μἑτρω ὡς ποιητης, ἡ ἁυευ μἑτρου ὡς ισιωτης" (Phaedr. 258 D). I doubt very much the appropriateness of the word idiot as applied to these unfortunate creatures, and I think the American term of Feeble-minded more correctly represents their condition.
[5] The question of the influence of alcoholic stimulants on the development of mental disease formed a prominent feature in the proceedings of this congress, and it is also a subject which is just now engaging the attention of pathologists in all parts of the world.
[6] "Mentally-deficient Children, their treatment and training." By G.E. Shuttleworth, M.D. Page 36.
[7] Toussenel, a French writer, says "La plupart des idiots sont des enfants procréés dans l'ivresse bacchique. On sait que les enfants se ressentent généralement de l'influence passionelle qui a présidé à leur conception." At a discussion at the Obstetrical Society, Dr. Langdon Down is reported to have entertained similar views.
[8] I would refer those who may wish to pursue the inquiry as to the baneful influence of alcohol on the human frame, to the celebrated Cantor Lectures on Alcohol, by my friend Sir B.W. Richardson, in which he introduces the physiological argument into the temperance cause, asserting that alcohol cannot be classified as a food; that degeneration of tissues is produced, that it neither supplies matter for construction nor production of heat, but, on the contrary, militates against both. Sir B.W. Richardson's latest views upon this subject are developed in the pages of the "Hospital" for February 1st and March 14th, of this present year.
In France, M. Lunier, Inspector of Asylums, has shown that the departments in which the consumption of alcohol had increased most, were those in which there had been a corresponding increase of insanity, and this was shown most strikingly in regard to women, at the period when the natural wines of the country gave way to the consumption of spirits.
In Sweden, Dr. Westfelt has lately made a communication to the Stockholm Medical Society, containing the statistics of alcoholic abuse and its results in Sweden. He calculates that at least from 7 to 12 or 13 per cent. among males, and from 1 to 2 per cent. among females, of all cases of acquired insanity, are due to the abuse of alcohol; and in reference to its influence on progeny and race, he shows that a steady diminution of the population was coincident with a period when drunkenness was at its greatest height.