On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Dora Greenwell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    formation of the idiot/ says Dr. Kitching, ‘ sets many others free. The late well-known Edward Smith, of Sheffield, stated in a public meeting at Scarborough that every idiot life required the devotion of a sound life for its care and tending whilst at home. By the restoration of every idiot to the capacity of self-tendence, a sound life is set free in addition, and restored to the general profit of society. Five thousand idiots cured of their helplessness, give back 10,000 useful lives to the community. Here is profit. Here is encouragement for the promoters of idiot training. Arithmetic, however, but faintly represents the advantages gained. It requires no strain of the imagination to picture the heavy gloom, the heartache and despondency of the parents, in that house where an idiot boy or girl is born. The anxious cares, the fears of danger, the incessant watch¬ ing, the ceaseless round of innumerable ministrations throughout each day, exhaust the energies and bear down the spirits of every member of the family. At what a sacrifice of life’s sweetest liberties is the idiot child reared !’ Nor must we forget, in considering this great subject, that we were men even before we were Christians, nor become oblivious of the claims of our brotherhood in that great ‘ congregation of Humanity, the first church founded by Jesus Christ upon earth, long before He himself appeared on it/*—Humanity, which, in the admirable words of Lavater, we shall find as we study it more closely, ‘ ever even in its humiliation, astonishing, ever a subject of wonder, surpassing even under its imperfect and abortive conditions * Lacordaire.
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