An address on the education of idiots : delivered at the annual meeting held at the Guildhall, Exeter of the Western Counties Idiot Asylum, Starcross, near Exeter on January 26th 1883 / by George Pycroft.

  • Pycroft, George, 1819-1894.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address on the education of idiots : delivered at the annual meeting held at the Guildhall, Exeter of the Western Counties Idiot Asylum, Starcross, near Exeter on January 26th 1883 / by George Pycroft. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    to be pleased when he was caressed. In fact he was apparently as much of an animal as a man. Bonaterre kept him a short time and then it entered into his mind that the wild boy might be better placed. He thought that a phenomenon like this would furnish to philosophy and natural history important notions on the original constitution of man, and on the develop- ment of the primitive faculties ; provided that the state of imbecil- ity we have noticed in this child does not offer an obstacle to instruction, and he sent him to that philosophical instructor who has accomplished so many prodigies in this class of teaching Monsieur Sicard. Now, this Mons. Sicard was the superintendent of a Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Paris, and Mons. Bonaterre hoped that he would have as much success with this humain sauvage as he had reached in the cases ordinarily confided to his care. The news of this strange boy's arrival soon spread through Paris, and all the world flocked to see him, people talked about him, and he was the lion of the day. But Mons. Sicard soon got tired of the boy, as I dare say Mons. Bonaterre had been; he found him very troublesome, there was no keeping him from tearing up his clothes, annoying the other children and trying to escape. Indeed, one day he endangered his life by jumping out of window, so he first merely gave him the run of the place, as our misplaced idiots have in lunatic asylums at the present day, and then he determined to rid himself of his plague altogether. This was in the days of the first French Republic, when there were philosophers who had new and strange opinions, and the case of this boy set them a thinkynge, and the subject was brought before the French Academy. Men who think for themselves do not all think alike, and there was a very lively discussion over the boy. Citizen Pinel, the same man who, synchronously with our Tuke in England, took the chains and fetters from the limbs of the poor maniacs in France and inaugurated a more humane treatment, this Citizen Pinel, I say, declared the boy was merely an idiot, while Citizen Itard, who was physician to the Deaf and Dumb School, was equally certain that the boy was an untutored savage, and he backed up his opinion by offering to take the boy into his institution and educate him. You can't educate him, said Pinel, because he is an idiot. I will educate him, said Itard, because he is not an idiot but a savage. Now, we will pause here for a moment and remember when and where we are. The scene is laid in the Academy of France, the time is at the beginning of this century, the speakers are