On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Dora Greenwell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    18/54 page 18
    approached those of the idiotic children confined in the Bicetre, and under the then rooted impression that nothing could be done to improve those who were born deficient, warned Itard that his cares would be thrown away. Itard took a different view of the boy’s condition, but so fully agreed with Pinel in the firm belief that idiocy was incur¬ able, and that children affected by it were not susceptible to the influence of any sort of -sociability or instruction, that when after years of patient labour he found out that the boy was really an idiot, one who as such had probably been cast out by his parents to perish in the forest, he gave up his case for ever in deep disappointment and disgust. But the zeal and patience which Itard brought to an obscure and unrepaying task, and continued to exert through a period of five long years, were not really thrown away. Himself a man of true genius, he had caught from another, the Spaniard Pereire, the first teacher of the deaf and dumb, whose labours a little preceded his own, the secret of the education of the senses; he had learnt from him the futility of pursuing ordinary methods of culture with children whose whole organization was excep¬ tional, and upon this hint of deep significance he spoke and acted. To attach the wild boy to the habits of social life, to awaken his nervous sensibility, to extend the circle of his ideas, to lead him by degrees to the use of language,—such were the aims of Itard, and such are now those of the idiots’ most advanced teacher; and none that have come after him, says M. Esquirol, have ever surpassed him in miracles of patience and ingenuity, in artifices brought to bear upon
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image