New facts and remarks concerning idiocy : being a lecture delivered before the New York Medical Journal Association, October 15, 1869 / by Edward Seguin.

  • Seguin, E. C. (Edward Constant), 1843-1898.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New facts and remarks concerning idiocy : being a lecture delivered before the New York Medical Journal Association, October 15, 1869 / by Edward Seguin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Brandeis University Libraries, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.

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    LECTURE. Mr, President and Gentlemen .'—Permit me to enter upon my subject rather abruptly, as this will be only a lecture, and can hardly attain the proportions of a pamphlet, or Memoir a Con- suiter, on topics pertaining to the treatment and prophylaxy of the neuroses of childhood, which culminate in paralysis, chorea, epilepsy, and idiocy. There are men who contract all that they touch ; there are others who enlarge all the ideas with which they come in con- tact. To see only idiocy in idiots,' would be to narrow it. To see beyond, what benefit can accrue to society from the actual improvement of idiots, and from the discovery of means of im- proving general education by the method expressly contrived for idiots, at once incorporates idiocy—retrograde phenomenon as it is by itself—among the agents of progress. # The devoted men and women who gave a quarter of a centu- ry to the improvement of idiots, have thus enlarged the theo- retical and practical importance of their subject, and rendered necessary an occasional review of the progress accomplished through their labors, progress in which the medical profession at large may not be participant, but of which we can not well afford to be ignorant. Idiocy being comparatively of rare occurrence, and its treatment requiring the concourse of resources seldom met with at home, a family physician is hardly expected to treat idiots, and may as well practically ignore their mode of training. But he is often consulted upon the chances of recovery, and the means of improvement provided abroad for them; and if he answers clearly, the parents follow his advice ; if not, they consult the sorceress, witch, or spiritual deceiver, who fill up the blank left in their hopes by our ignorance. Therefore it