The history of the treatment of the feeble-minded / [Walter E Fernald].

  • Fernald, Walter E., 1859-1924.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the treatment of the feeble-minded / [Walter E Fernald]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reopened by Dr. Voisin in 1839. Dr. Seguin remained at the Bicetre only one year, retiring to continue the work in his private school in the Hospice des Incurables. After seven years of patient work and experiments and the publication of two or three pamphlets describing the work, a committee from the Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1844 examined critically and thoroughly his methods of training and educating idiot children, and reported to the Academy, giving it the highest commendation and declaring that, up to the time he commenced his labors in 1837, idiots could not be educated by any means previously known or practised, but that he had solved the problem. Plis work thus approved by the highest authority, Dr. Seguin continued his private school in Paris until the Revolution in 1848, when he came to America, where he was instrumental in es¬ tablishing schools for idiots in various States. In 1846 Dr. Seguin published his classical and comprehensive “Treatise on Idiocy,” which was crowned by the Academy and has continued to be the standard text-book for all interested in the edu¬ cation of idiots up to the present time. His elaborate system of teaching and training idiots consisted in the careful “ adaptation of the principles of physiology, through physiological means and instru¬ ments, to the development of the dynamic, perceptive, reflective, and spontaneous functions of youth.” This physiological education of defective brains as a result of systematic training of the special senses, the functions, and the muscular system, was looked upon as a visionary theory, but has been verified and confirmed by modern experiments and researches in physiological psychology. Dr. Seguin’s school was visited by scientists and philanthropists from nearly every part of the civilized world, and, his methods bear¬ ing the test of experience, other schools were soon established in other countries, based upon these methods. In 1842 Dr. Guggenbuhl established a school upon the slope of the Abendenberg in Switzerland, for the care and training of cretins, so many of whom are found in the dark, damp valleys of the Alps. This school was very successful in its results, and attracted much attention throughout Europe. At Berlin, in 1842, a school for the instruction of idiots was opened by Dr. Saegert. In England the publication of the results of the work of Drs. Seguin, Guggenbuhl, and Saegert, and the efforts of Drs. Connolly and Reed, led to the establishment of a private school at Bath in 1846, and later to the finely appointed establishments at Colchester and Earlswood.