The results of this treatment were in every respect remarkable. As they
slowly advanced in their studies an increased mental activity was noted,
and the workings of the mind were less forced and laborious than at the
beginning. In mental arithmetic they made progress, and were able, with
comparative ease and rapidity, to add three or four single numbers. “The
drill and discipline they were subjected to wrought an improvement in
their physical condition. The baths and stimulation of the cutaneous
system brought the skin to the highest degree of functional activity,
overcoming the integumentary disorders of five noted in the beginning. The
daily drill and dumb-bell exercises hardened and developed muscles that
previously were soft and flabby, and the entire muscular system acquired
firmness and power. The setting-up drill improved the carriage and
conferred a rapidity of action not before indulged in. The aimless
shuffling gait gave way to a carriage inspired by elastic muscles and
supple joints. The faces parted with the dull and stolid look they had in
the beginning, assuming a more intelligent expression, while the eye
gained a brightness and clearness that before was conspicuous by its
absence. With physical culture and improvement there came a mental
awakening, a cerebral activity never before manifested in their prison
life. The purely animal man with his ox-like characteristics seemed to
recede before the intellectual. Their progress in school-work was not
steadily onward, but intermittently progressive.” Whereas in the six
months before the class was formed the men had obtained less than 10/11 of
a mark (for demeanour, labour, and school) per man each month, during the
six months that followed the breaking-up of the class the number of marks
earned was 7-7/16 per month per man. There was a simultaneous and rapid
improvement, moral, physical, and intellectual--an improvement that was
common to all, although more pronounced in some, and which was very
encouraging, considering the material of which the class was formed. A
year later several had been released on parole, and were demonstrating
their ability to maintain themselves honestly, while only two of them,
still in prison, were not doing well.[108]
The results of this and similar experiments have been so satisfactory that
a fully-equipped gymnasium and Turkish bath are now in course of erection
at Elmira. “Here,” Dr. Wey tells me, “we propose to treat those who are in
arrears both in body and mind, and prepare them for work and study in the
schools of letters and trades. By this plan it is possible to impress
later the mind to a greater degree than could be done by taking up its
cultivation at the time the man comes to us.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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