Notice of Dr Guggenbühl's hospital for infant cretins.

Date:
[1850?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of Dr Guggenbühl's hospital for infant cretins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    NOTICE <b/8Qy} OF DE GUGGENBUHL’S HOSPITAL EOE INFANT CRETINS, (Extracted with 'permission from Chamber s’s Edinburgh Journal.) The unfortunate beings whose destiny forms the subject of this memoir are well known to travellers in Switzerland, whose enjoyment of the beauties of that glorious country has often been clouded by the sight of what has hitherto been considered as incurable suffering. The benevolent have sighed over their degradation, the political economist has calculated the dead weight that they must prove on so poor a population, and the Christian has mourned over immortal souls enveloped, as it were, in a chrysalis, which will open only when the cerements of the tomb shall burst. They have existed for centuries—indeed no one in the country knows the time when there were no cretins in the land; they have existed as an unavoidable evil, and no means had hitherto been sought to turn away so great an affliction, or modify its intensity, till one of those noble and un¬ selfish characters which the world sees from time to time stand forth from the crowd, rose up to help them, giving his powers of mind and energies of heart to the subject, and devoting himself entirely to the cure or ame¬ lioration of infant cretins. It is now seven years since the simple-hearted and benevolent Dr Gug- genbiihl founded his asylum on the heights of the Abendberg, a spot which poets and painters might choose as the scene of their reveries, and which is singularly well calculated to supply the wants of its inmates for their physical and intellectual development. A purer air cannot exist, nor a scene of more exquisite beauty. It is an open space three thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea, between the lakes of Thun and Brientz, and overhanging the towns of Interlacken and Unterseen; below, the mountain is thickly covered by a fine forest, and opposite rises the giant form of the glorious Jungfrau, a sovereign among the mighty Alps. The buildings which form the hospice are extremely modest, but conveni¬ ent ; and on that height is to be found nearly all the necessaries of daily life. The produce of the kitchen-garden is in general very abundant; and Indian corn, and even other corn, grow well there. The inmates bake their own bread, and sometimes kill their own meat. Poultry and goats complete their stock. Almost always the winter, which is severe in the valley, passes gently over the heights. Two unfailing springs of water supply them amply with baths, as well as what is wanted for household use. In this retirement, with all the ardour with which discoveries inspire genius, and the patience and affection with which the love of his fel¬ low-creatures has filled his heart, the young and scientific physician we have named has resolved on spending his life, surrounded by objects for the greater part of a disgusting nature, and without companions of like education with himself, except in the valley below. Before this living