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"A Chapter on Idiots"

Creator: n/a
Date: June 1854
Publication: Harper's New Monthly Magazine
Source: Available at selected libraries

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The wearing uncertainty of many years succeeds the infancy. The ignorant notions of idiocy that prevailed before we knew even the little that we yet know of the brain, prevent the parents recognizing the state of the case. The old legal accounts of idiocy, and the old suppositions of what it is, are very unlike what they see. The child ought not, according to legal definition, to know his own name, but he certainly does; for when his own plate or cup is declared to be ready, be rushes to it. He ought not to be able, by law, "to know letters;" yet he can read, and even write, perhaps, although nobody can tell how he learned, for he never seemed to attend when taught. It was just as if his fingers and tongue went of themselves, while his mind was in the moon. Again, the law declared any body an idiot "who could not count twenty pence;" whereas this boy seems, in some unaccountable way, to know more about sums (of money and of every thing else) than any body in the family. He does not want to learn figures, his arithmetic is strong without them, and always instantaneously ready. Of course we do not mean that every idiot has these particular powers. Many can not speak; more can not read. But almost every one of the thousands of idiots in England has some power that the legal definition declares him not to have, and that popular prejudice will not believe. Thus does the mother go on from year to year, hardly admitting that her boy "is deficient," and quite sure that he is not an idiot -- there being some things in which he is so very clever!

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The great improvement in the treatment of idiots and lunatics since science began to throw light on the separate organization of the human faculties, is one of the most striking instances in all human experience of the practical blessedness induced by knowledge. The public is already familiar with the way in which, by beneficent training, the apparent faculties of idiots are made to bring out the latent ones, and the strong powers to exercise the weaker, until the whole class are found to be capable of a cultivation never dreamed of in the old days when the name IDIOT swallowed up all the rights and all the chances of the unfortunate creature who was so described. In those days the mother might well deny the description, and refuse the term. She would point to the wonderful faculty her child had in some one direction, and admit no more than that he was "not like other children." Well, this is enough. She need not be driven further. If her Harry is "not like other children," that is enough for his own training, and that of the rest of the household.

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A training it may be truly called for them all, from the father to the kitchen-maid. The house that has an idiot in it can never be like any other. The discipline is very painful, but, when well conducted and borne, it is wonderfully beautiful. Harry spoils things, probably: cuts with scissors whatever can be cut -- the leaves of books, the daily newspaper, the new shirt his mother is making, the doll's arm, the rigging of the boat his brother has been fitting up for a week, the maid's cap ribbon, his father's silk purse. It would be barbarous to take scissors from him, and inconvenient too; for he spends hours in cutting out the oddest and prettiest things -- symmetrical figures, in paper; figures that seem to be fetched out of the kaleidoscope. Lapfuls of such shapes does he cut out in a week, wagging his head, and seeming not to look at the scissors; but never making a wrong snip. The same orderliness of faculty seems to prevail throughout his life. He must do precisely the same thing at precisely the same moment every day; must have always the same chair, wailing or pushing in great distress if any body else is using it; and must wear the same clothes, so that it is a serious trouble to get any new clothes put on. However carefully they may be changed while he is asleep, there is no getting him dressed in the morning without sad distress. One such Harry, whom we knew very well, had a present one day of a plaything most happily chosen -- a pack of cards. There was symmetry in plenty! When he first took them into his hands, they happened to be all properly sorted, except that the court-cards were all in a batch at the top, and one other -- the ten of spades -- which had slipped out, and was put at the top of all. For all the rest of his life (he died at nineteen) the cards must be in that order and no other; and his fingers quivered nervously with haste to put them in that order if they were disarranged. One day while he was out walking, we took 'that top card away and shuffled the rest.' On his return, he went to work as usual. When he could not find the ten of spades, he turned his head about in the way which was his sign of distress, gave that most pathetic sort of sigh -- that drawn-in, instead of breathed-out sigh, which is so common among his class -- and searched every where for the card. When obliged to give the matter up, he mournfully drew out the ten of clubs, and made that do instead. We could hold out no longer, and gave him his card; and he seized upon it as eagerly as any digger on any nugget, and chucked and chuckled, and wagged his head, and was perfectly happy. We once poured some comfits into his hand. They happened to be seven. At the same moment every day after, he would hold out his hand, as if by mechanism, while his head was turned another way. We poured six comfits into his palm. Still he did not look, but would not eat them, and was restless till we gave him one more. Next day, we gave him nine; and he would not touch them till he had thrust back two upon us.

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