New facts and remarks concerning idiocy : being a lecture delivered before the New York Medical Journal Association, October 15, 1869 / by Edward Seguin.

  • Seguin, E. C. (Edward Constant), 1843-1898.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New facts and remarks concerning idiocy : being a lecture delivered before the New York Medical Journal Association, October 15, 1869 / by Edward Seguin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Brandeis University Libraries, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.

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    took an initial interest in that reform. He witnessed at Bice- tre the efforts of Pinel, and gave the first authorization to loosen their chains, and let them stand free before their bene- factor ; though saying at the same time to the hero : My dear doctor, I give the authprization, but, on your demand, at your risk and peril, sure that they will kill youI Since then it has taken three generations of Esquirols, Connollys, Leurets, to raise, upon that old soil of horrors, the present spruce, placid, and benevolent institution for the insane, hardly distinguisha- ble from that for idiots by its magnitude. This, Mr. President and gentlemen, introduces the subject of our own schools for idiots. A little more than twenty years ago, there was no educa- tional establishment for idiots in the United States ; now there are two in New York, two in Massachusetts, one in Connecti- cut, one in Pennsylvania, one in Ohio, one in Kentucky, one in Illinois—at least nine in all, where above one thousand chil- dren are under instruction. An idea of these institutions may be formed by visiting the New York State Asylum for Idiots, which is a public charity, and the School for Feeble-minded Children, at Barre, Mass., which is private and self-supporting. Both were created by the same man. Twenty-one years ago, Dr. Hervey B. Wilbur, then a physi- cian at Barre, Mass., undertook the novel and perilous enter- prise of attaching his own fortunes and those of his young family to the task of educating idiot children. He had no predecessor in this undertaking in this country, and he was sustained in his good work, against the forebodings and ridi- cule of friends and neighbors, only by the bravery of his wife. After a few years, during which the young couple gave un- interrupted attention to their pupils, even to the extent of keeping the most helpless in their own bedroom, Dr. Wilbur was called, first, to Albany, and subsequently (when the State Asylum was erected) to Syracuse, there to organize the State institution for this helpless class ; and was succeeded at Barre by Dr. George Brown, under whose careful and able manage- ment that school has attained its present high standing.