On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Greenwell, Dora, 1821-1882.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cheerful reading, they are not of the kind which makes a half-hour pass pleasantly to the general reader, nor are they likely to be taken up except by persons particularly inter¬ ested in the subject to which they are devoted. They carry us into the heart of deep scientific problems, and involve the weightiest practical conclusions. Seguin tells us that when he began to write on idiocy he found himself involved, without intending it, in moral, medical, physio¬ logical, and educational questions of the highest import. One question, he says, drew on another, each fact seemed to rest upon some anterior one, alone able to explain and to interpret it, so intimately connected are all researches that have Man for their object. It does not fall within our present limits to follow out the questions into which these books enter largely; a few simple, clearly established facts are enough to make any thinking person feel the importance of their leading in¬ quiry—‘ Can the idiot be educated V England and Wales, it seems, contain at present about 50,000 idiotic and weak- minded persons. A formidable battalion, and the more so when it is swelled and strengthened by the vast number of unrecognised cases of mental infirmity, of backward, im¬ perfectly developed, and peculiarly constituted children, who all require, in the language of those who best under¬ stand their condition, a special (or physiological) education, and who cannot be benefited, but will assuredly be injured, by the course of ordinary teaching. How all-important to the life of the family, to the well-being of the nation, be¬ comes the question of their susceptibility to improvement! yj How worthy of the attention of the Government of every