Mentally-deficient children : their treatment and training / by G.E. Shuttleworth and W.A. Potts.

  • Shuttleworth, G. E. (George Edward), 1842-1928
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mentally-deficient children : their treatment and training / by G.E. Shuttleworth and W.A. Potts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Defining idiocy as an “ infirmity of the nervous system, which has for its effect the abstraction of the whole or part of the organs and the faculties of the child from the normal action of the will/’ he proceeds to divide all cases into two principal classes, those of profound, and those of superficial idiocy. The basis of the treatment he proposes is almost identical with that described in later works as physio¬ logical education. Starting with the axiom that “ The education of the senses must precede the education of the mind,” he argues that the true physiological method of tuition for persons whose nervous system is imperfectly developed is (i) “ to exercise the imperfect organs so as to develop their functions,” and (2) “ to train the functions so as to develop the imperfect organs.” Ingenious devices are described whereby the sense-organs may be exercised, and cases are given in which such exercises have been adapted to special incapacities. In Great Britain interest had been aroused by the publication, in 1843, of an account by Dr. William Twining of what he had witnessed at Guggenbiihrs Institution on the Abendberg. This led to the establishment, in 1846, of a small school for imbeciles at Bath, under the management of the Misses White, subsequently carried on as a benevolent establishment by Miss Heritage. This has now developed into the Rock Hall House (Magdalen Hospital) School, Combe Down (with thirty-eight imbecile children), under the management of the Trustees of the Munici¬ pal Charities of Bath. It is a matter of archaeological interest to note that this Institution owes its estab¬ lishment in 1891 to an Order of the Charity Com¬ missioners amalgamating the school above referred to with an ancient charity founded in the twelfth
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