[39] A society has lately been formed under the name of "The National Association for promoting the welfare of the Feeble-minded," the object of which is to establish homes for defective and feeble-minded children of a class more highly-endowed with intelligence than those who would be received into an ordinary idiot asylum; statistics having shown that ignorance and mental dulness tend to crime in various forms. Without expressing any very decided opinion upon the above project, it seems to me that the unnecessary multiplication of charitable institutions is itself an evil, and is not calculated to promote efficiency or economy; and if special provision is made for those just above the highest class of idiots, as is proposed, the present Idiot Asylums must necessarily suffer. Without, therefore, in any way disparaging the above scheme, I would suggest great caution in reference to it, as it is impolitic and unwise to make fresh demands upon a philanthropic public, unless the need for it is clearly established, as the result must inevitably be the diversion of funds from existing institutions already doing a good and charitable work. [40] Maladies Mentales, Tome ii., p. 76, par E. Esquirol, médecin en chef de la maison royale des aliénés de Charenton. "Les idiots sont ce qu'ils doivent être pendant tout le cours de leur vie. On ne conçoit pas la possibilité de changer cet état. Rien ne saurait donner aux malheureux idiots, même pour quelques instants, plus de raison, plus d'intelligence." [41] "Mentally deficient children," page 110. [42] This painstaking observer has investigated this subject in an interesting communication on Sporadic Cretinism in the "Edinburgh Medical Journal" for May, 1893. Dr. Ireland considers Sporadic Cretinism to be a congenital or infantile form of myxœdema, and bearing in mind the increasing mental torpor which has followed the ablation of the thyroid gland performed by Kocher, and the cretinoid condition induced in monkeys by the removal of the thyroid by Horsley, he is drawn to the conclusion that this gland secretes and pours something into the blood which has a powerful effect upon the nutrition and function of the brain, and of the whole organism, and these views receive a certain amount of confirmation from the fact that in most cases of Sporadic Cretinism the thyroid gland is totally wanting. Dr. Ireland also expresses the opinion, in which I fully concur, that there is too much solidism in our pathology, and that the vital powers of the blood have been too much overlooked.