Report made to the legislature of Massachusetts, upon idiocy / by S.G. Howe.

  • Samuel Gridley Howe
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report made to the legislature of Massachusetts, upon idiocy / by S.G. Howe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    aommontoealtft of Ma8t$at%\wtm. Boston, Feb. 26, 1848. To His Excellency, George N. Briggs, Governor of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts: — Sir: — The undersigned, commissioners appointed by your excellency, under the act of April 11, 1846, to inquire into the condition of the Idiots of the Commonwealth, to ascertain their number, and whether any thing can be done in their behalf, respectfully REPORT as follows: — When we accepted the task assigned to us, it was not with- out a sense of its importance. We did not look upon idiocy as a thing which concerned only the hundred or thousand unfortunate creatures in this generation who are stunted or blighted by it; for even if means could be found of raising all the idiots now within our borders from their brutishness, and alleviating their suffering, the work would have to be done over again, because the next generation would be burdened with an equal number of them. Such means would only cut off the outward cancer, and leave the vicious sources of it in ihe sys- tem. We regarded idiocy as a diseased excrescence of soci- ety ; as an outward sign of an inward malady. It was hard to believe it to be in the order of Providence that the earth should always be cumbered with so many creatures in the human
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