ANNA GARLIN SPENCER. He walked, majestic, onward toward the Light; And heights more fair. They pressed him close at last Amazed, the throng looked backward, and with scorn But Love replied, more sternly sweet, But he, So far behind, from Life's deep pulsing sea I saw him snatch, when cast to earth, one gleam Of yearning hope; but one faint, fitful beam O'er which heaven's light might pass to his pale soul To stir its life and make it grow. The whole Ro nd world in league with me I held to aid His secret struggle; till, at last, afraid, Yet wrestling still, he strained half way from beast He stumbles onward toward the path ye tread! Ashamed, the multitude made haste the way Sketch of the History of the Treatment of Mental Defect Martin W. Barr Chief Physician, Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-minded Children, Elwyn, Pa. The work in America of providing for the amelioration of mental defect by means of treatment and training, owes its inception to the successful experimentation and persevering zeal of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, director of the Perkins' Institute for the Blind, Boston, Mass. During a period of little more than half a century, this work has been extended throughout the continent from ocean to ocean, has become a component in both state and municipal charities, and is beginning to be recognized by educators as not only an important feature in education, but a necessary factor in solving many problems and in relieving congested conditions in the public schools. The increase has been phenomenal from the first experimental school in 1842, to twenty-nine large institutions and many private training schools scattered through twenty-one states. These, caring for some ten thousand feeble-minded folk, furnish object lessons also to teachers, and training for the special schools for backward children now rapidly becoming a part of the school system in all our large cities. The Massachusetts Training School, remoyed from Boston to Waverley, continues its good work, renewing in its fiftieth year its office of pioneer by the establishment of the first colony in America, giving permanent home and life occupation to its trained workers. Barre, also in the neighborhood of Boston-established at about the same time by Dr. Wilbur, who was early called to inaugurate the work ir New York-is now the largest private institution in America. To the character of these pioneers was due the growth and quality of work established within a short period upon sound principles, and rapidly shaped and adapted to existing conditions; but an important feature, not to be overlooked in its history is, that its impulse and inspiration came direct from the fountain head in the old world, at a period when the stream 3 was quickened by the enthusiasm of successful exploitation. For a clear appreciation of this, a brief review of earlier efforts is necessary. In the history of social evolution, we find in successive ages among many nations as they advance in civilization, the custom of allowing their defectives to perish, preserving thus the integrity of the race by protecting it from vitiated heredity. Driven thus from the haunts of men, the imbecile, consorting with the beasts, became often as one of them. The eighteenth century, however, shows science, religion and philosophy working successively yet unconsciously together toward amelioration, and developing and building up a scheme of relief which was to find its fruition in many lands in results similar to those we have been reviewing in America. The first organized plan for rescue and redemption was made by St. Vincent de Paul and his Confrérie de Charité, who received from Anne of Austria permission to occupy the building of the Bicêtre begun by Richelieu for a military hospital, and gathered there the imbecile and impotent, not alone from Paris, but from the remote provinces. This, to-day a great hospital of Paris, including many departments, has still a large section for the treatment and training of mental defectives. The The next link in this chain of historical sequence, we must seek in another country and among another class of defectives. In the history of work among deaf mutes, we find mention of Jacob Rodrigues Péreire, a native of Portugal, resident in Spain during the period of culmination in both countries of active thought and discovery. This man, scientist and philanthropist, had early devoted himself to alleviating the sorrows of those enclosed by the shutters of silence. Building upon the manual alphabet of Bonnet, A he gradually arrived at a plan of developing one sense to supply the lack of another, until he actually taught his pupils to hear through the skin, giving them, finally, the power of articulate speech, gained through the sense of touch. school established by him in Paris, and continued by the Abbé de L'Epée, was frequented by Jean Jacques Rousseau and much of the inspiration of his Emile, was doubtless drawn from the view of physiologic education there presented. Now among the many schools of philosophy which the Parisians like the Athenians of old delighted in, was one known as "The Sensualists." These, in accentuating the necessities of sense training, claimed that education should consist of a repetition of sensations, until ideas grew simply as sensations transformed1. The effort of Itard to prove this in the education of the Savage of Aveyron, a wild boy found in the woods (1798), and brought to this school. of de L'Epée, and his unconscious modification of treatment to meet the needs of one who proved not savage, but imbecile, is the third point, completing the cycle of preparation for a work destined to go out into all lands a veritable gospel of regeneration to them that sit in the darkness of mental defect. Itard, holding with Pinel and others. as to the incurability of idiocy, and in despair at what he considered failure of his experiment (notwithstanding its favorable consideration by the French Academy), consigned his subject to a life at Bicêtre; but there was one associated with him who, untrammelled by disappointment, could read with clearer vision than Itard was able to do the promise contained in apparent failure. This man was Edward Seguin. Familiar with the work at Bicêtre, versed in the theory and practice of Péreire and de L'Epée, he was able so to unite these with the modifications he had noted in the experiment of Itard, as to evolve a system of physiologic training adapted to the needs of the imbecile; a system which, upon receiving the approval of the Academy he was called to introduce at Bicêtre, and which later he pursued in a private school until the out 1 For a very interesting account of such work see National Conference of Charities and Correction. Report of 1885, Richards, p. 174 et seq. break of the revolution sent him into exile, and brought him to accept an urgent call to America. Interest thus aroused and attention con centrated seems to have caused an awakening almost simultaneous in many countries; and the successful experimentations of Guggenbühl in Switzerland, and of Saegert in Germany, justly entitle them to rank as pioneers in this mid-century of work, further sustained and carried forward by John Bost in France, Andrew Reed in England, and, as we have already noted, by Samuel Howe in America. The first teacher in Dr. The Beginnings Howe's experimental school in America. had been a student of Seguin's methods at Bicêtre. This young man, James B. Richards, was an enthusiast in a work which he successfully inaugurated in Boston and later pursued in Philadelphia, laying the foundation of the Pennsylvania Training School-of which he was the first superintendent-which now, as the asylum village Elwyn, provides for over one thousand feeble-minded children. Dr. Howe, after the final separation of the Massachusetts Training School from the Perkins Institute, was fortunate in securing for a brief period the services of Dr. Seguin, and that assistance and encouragement of which Dr. Wilbur at Barre had been the recipient. The institution at Columbus, Ohio, which under Dr. Doren has recently passed the thousand mark, received from Dr. Seguin the same quickening impulse and invaluable counsel to which Dr. Wilbur attests in a later experience with him in the New York state institution at Syracuse. Associated for a short time with Mr. Richards in the direction of the Pennsyl vania Training School, Dr. Seguin eventually established a medico-pedagogic school in New York city on much the same lines as the one he had formerly conducted in Paris. His teachings and methods, thus introduced by himself personally in two countries, have been no less cordially received in others, and form largely the basis of the work both on the continent and throughout the British Empire. His theory, recognizing the incurability of mental defect, yet shows possibility of History of the Treatment of the Mental Defect amelioration and a division according to capacity, promising improvement in all but the lowest form, and in the highest even the attainment of a certain efficiency in simple industrial occupations. As the massing of numbers has given opportunity for comparison and experimentation, experience has gradually extended and modified these theories into a practice which discerns unhesitatingly and assigns to asylums the helpless or the merely improvable forms of idiocy; and for the various grades of imbecility provides schools for training in the various industrial and manual arts., Dr. Kerlin's special contribution to the work was a recognition in the higher grades of the moral imbecile of the irresponsible criminal; and the consequent necessity for his permanent sequestration as 881 a means of prevention from, in lieu of punishment for, crime. Investigation and experimentation at Elwyn since his time verifies this conclusion, and furthermore discovers in all grades the type he described, modified or intensified according to the peculiar characteristics of the grade. It has also noted and provided for the needs of the backward child, a type on the border line of defect, and furthermore, in a close study of all grades, it has by a gradual and careful reduction of theory to practice, finally formulated an educational classification which not only defines the character of each grade and the means of development best suited to it, but also indicates the limit of capacity and the probable life occupation thus: Custodial Life and Perpetual Guardianship. Mentally and morally deficient. Low Grade: Trainable in industrial occupations; temperament bestial. Middle Grade: Trainable in industrial and manual occupations; a plotter of mischief. High Grade: Trainable in manual and intellectual arts; with genius for evil. IMBECILE. Long Appren ticeship and Colony Life Under Protection. Mentally deficient. Low Grade: Trainable in industrial and simplest manual occupations. Trained for a BACKWARD OR MENTALLY FEEBLE. Mental processes normal, but slow and requiring special training and environment to prevent deterioration; defect imminent under slightest provocation, such as excitement, over-stimulation or illness. |