Cretins and cretinism : a prize thesis of the University of Edinburgh / by George S. Blackie.
- George Stodart Blackie
- Date:
- 1855
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cretins and cretinism : a prize thesis of the University of Edinburgh / by George S. Blackie. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![review one or two interesting facts connected with tlio life of the beings afflicted with it. Having considered what Cretinism is, we have now to examine how Cretins live, and how they enjoy existence. The traveller, in his rapid passage through Switzerland, in the grand tour of the Alps, passes many of these melancholy and interesting beings unnoticed] in his route, or if he does notice them, poor beings beg- ging by the roadside (the full extent, in general, of the edu- cation of even the well informed Cretin), he turns fromj them with a shrug of horror, and a poor idiot! it is owiugl to this, perhaps, and the constant beaten track of the BritishI traveller abroad, that wo possess no particular account oti, them in our literature, and it is merely here and there thatJ we find a notice of a few lines made of them. But there if. still great room for practical examination and scientific inves ) tigation of these beings, who in many parts of the Swiss Alps,i slightly off the beaten track, are to be found in hundreds, j As in Scotland wo look upon idiots with a kind of liaIlow-3 ed superstition, so in Styria, in Switzerland, and in tht other countries in which they occur, the Cretins are lookec upon as a species of hallowed individuals, sacred beings, a; scapegoats on whom an affliction is cast for the benefit o the community ; and, consequently, any injury offered t( them is sure to be highly resented. This arises from a na tural feeling, which is shown more or less by all nations, ai we see, for example, in our own country, and in tlie higl respect paid by the Turks to idiots. The cause of it is thi total helplessness of the beings, who need all the care whici can be bestowed on them, and because the uneducate( community seemed to feci tliat tbcso individuals are suffer ing such dreadful, mysterious, and apparently undesorvc( afflictions, not for themselves so much as for the sins of th( family to which they belong. And it is in relation to thi that the jdiilosophizing German Kohl remarks, that in al most all nations a certain saintly halo is piously allowed t( encircle the heads of those who are unsound in mind ; foi what men cannot explain by any second cause, they invari ably refer to the first Great Cause; besides that, in th(](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21478132_0038.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
