Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
For the idiot, who not only can not be trained, but who in many cases
is unimprovable even in the simplest matters of self-help, nothing is
needed but that care and attention found in every well-regulated
nursery of delicate children, the _sine qua non_ being regular hours,
simple nourishing food, frequent baths, and tender mothering. As many
are paralyzed, blind, lame, or epileptic, it is desirable that the
dormitories, well ventilated, be on the same floor with the living
rooms and of easy access to bathrooms and playgrounds. Covered and
carefully guarded porches should afford the much-needed fresh air and
outdoor life in all weathers. These, with cheerful, sunny playrooms,
provided with simple toys and furnished with bright decorations
varying with the season, will contribute the maximum of pleasure for
this life of perpetual infancy. Low vitality, general poverty of the
whole physical make-up, the prevalence of phthisis and epilepsy and
kindred diseases require the daily inspection of a physician, while
the comfort and well-being of the whole, both workers and children,
are insured by a capable and sympathetic house mother.
The character of attendants is of the first importance, as these are
they who live with the children; it should combine that firmness,
tenderness, and balance that constitute an even temperament, capable
of recognizing and meeting an occasion without loss of self-control.
The duties involve not only the care of the idiots, but the training
and direction of idio-imbeciles as aids, and this dealing with natures
often wholly animal, requires a certain refinement and dignity of
character--at least an entire absence of coarseness--while a knowledge
of the simpler manual arts, and if possible of drawing and music, will
do much to soften and brighten these darkened natures. As these
qualities are valuable as well as rare, the remuneration should be in
proportion; certainly sufficient to induce permanency and to
compensate for such isolation. A life of constant wear and tear
demands also regular periods of rest, and the corps therefore should
be sufficiently large to give relief hours daily as well as vacations.
The idio-imbecile, but one remove from his weaker brother, to whose
wants he may be trained to minister, finds here his fitting place, and
the domestic service of these asylums may be largely drawn from this
class and also from that of the low-grade imbecile. Working as an aid,
never alone, always under direction, he finds in a monotonous round of
the simplest daily avocations his life happiness, his only safety from
lapsing into idiocy, and therefore his true home.
The relief to the home, the actual benefit to the State in this
housing and care of the idiot and idio-imbecile can never be fully
estimated. It is reckoned, however, in a general way that for every
idiot sequestrated the energies of two if not four normal persons are
returned to society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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