At the same period that New York took the initiative (1846), a commission was appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature to inquire into the condition of the idiot population of this state, and to report as to what was necessary to be done. The report being favourable to action, a wing in the Blind Institution at South Boston was appropriated to an idiot training school. This was in October, 1848. In 1850 this school underwent a transformation, being incorporated as the "Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Youth," and placed under the charge of the well-known Dr. S. G. Howe, the instructor of Laura Bridgman. "We are happy to say," he observes in a report of this school, "that in its experience there have been hardly any so low as to be beyond the reach of some elevating influence, none, or next to none, so fixed in their degradation as to be unrecoverable." Dr. H. B. Wilbur states that no provision is made for a large proportion of idiots in America; the present training institutions being quite inadequate to the applications made. The consequence is that many are placed in jails or almshouses. Recommendations have been made that these custodian cases should have either special asylums provided for them, or separate departments connected with lunatic asylums or training idiot institutions. It is calculated that there must be fully 38,000 idiots in the United States. It would be wrong to pass over Germany without stating that much persevering and successful work has been accomplished by Herr Sägert and others. We were more struck with the results he obtained, when we visited his school in Berlin in 1853, than with anything we witnessed elsewhere on the Continent. In Switzerland there are training schools at Basle, Berne, Zurich, Lausanne (two), and Etoy. They provide for about eighty cases.[224]