A rough sketch of modern Paris : $b or, Letters on society, manners, public curiosities, and amusements, in that capitalLemaistre, J. G. (John Gustavus)
History
A rough sketch of modern Paris : $b or, Letters on society, manners, public curiosities, and amusements, in that capital
Lemaistre, J. G. (John Gustavus)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel
The physician Pinel, to whose inspection the boy was first submitted,
reported, that the organs of sense in this unfortunate child were
reduced, from the want of use, to such a state of debility, that, in
this respect, he was inferiour to several domestic animals. His eyes,
without fixing themselves, and without expression, wandered wildly from
one object to another, incapable of distinguishing the nearest from the
most distant objects. His organ of hearing was alike insensible of the
loudest noise, or the softest harmony. The power of the voice was lowered
to such a degree, that he could not make an uniform and guttural sound.
The sense of smelling was so little exercised, that he received, with the
same indifference, the odour of the choicest perfumes, or the nauseous
stench of the filthy couch on which he lay. To conclude, the sense of
touching was confined to the mere mechanical functions of taking hold of
bodies.
In respect to his intellectual powers, the same physician stated him to
be incapable of attention (excepting as to the objects of his immediate
wants), and consequently incapable also of all those operations which
are created by attention. Destitute of memory, of judgment, and of the
power of imagination, and so limited, even in the ideas relative to
his wants, that he had not yet learnt to open a door, or to get upon a
chair, in order to reach those objects of food which were held above his
grasp. In fact, destitute of every means of communication, having neither
expression nor intention in the motions of his body, passing suddenly,
and without any presumable cause, from the gloom of apathy, to the most
immoderate fits of laughter. Insensible of every kind of moral affection,
his discernment was but a calculation of gluttony; his pleasure an
agreeable sensation of the organs of taste; his sense, an aptitude to
produce some incoherent ideas relative to his wants—in one word, all his
existence seemed purely animal.
M. Pinel afterwards compared “le sauvage d’Aveyron” with children born,
or become, irrevocably idiots; and he was inclined to conclude, that this
unhappy child, doomed to an incurable evil, was not susceptible either of
sociality or instruction; but he expressed this opinion with considerable
doubt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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