Now let us bring this matter home to ourselves. Where are the 3,000 unhappy blighted individuals that claim the Eastern Counties for their home? It is true that some of them are in the homes of the affluent, but the greater number are in the cottages of the poor, where the trouble of providing for one such member often reduces a working family to pauperism; the poor child beloved by its parents, is, perhaps, loathed by their neighbours, is avoided by other children, hidden from visitors, a constant care and sorrow to the mother, a source of anxious foresight to the father; in fact, the poor idiot child is like a Upas tree, that poisons the whole atmosphere around it, and the burden of his presence in a poor man's family is a new weight added to the load that was already sinking them down. Perhaps you may say, we agree with you, we lament as you do, that the narrow home of the humble artisan should be rendered intolerable by the presence of these stricken members of our race; but, we have been given to understand, that if not absolutely incurable, but very little can be done for them, that they baffle the efforts of the most zealous educators, and are almost beyond the reach of human sympathy. Now this was the language generally used half a century ago, and a celebrated French authority on the subject, Esquirol, considered that idiots were what they must remain for the rest of their lives; that there was no possibility of ameliorating their condition, and that no means were known by which a larger amount of intelligence could be developed in them.[40] In fact, an effort to ameliorate the condition of the congenital imbecile was regarded by psychologists and physicians as absolutely hopeless, and the standard "Dictionnaire de Médecine," published in 1837, broadly stated that it was useless to attempt to combat idiotism; in order that the intellectual exercise might be established, it would be necessary to change the conformation of organs which are beyond the reach of all modification. So great was the pessimism prevalent on this subject, that it was insinuated that the idea of teaching an idiot could only enter the brain of one somewhat closely allied to that class!