HISTORY OF PEDIATRICS 525 



belief in miracles and in infallible cures. Mainly the tonsils have 

 been puffed up to be the main causes of many human troubles and 

 their removal a panacea. According to a modern writer it prevents 

 tuberculosis, but the prophet is a little too bold, for he adds that 

 with the exception of himself there are very few able to accom- 

 plish it. Defective or diseased brains are frequent in most condi- 

 tions. The former class allows even imbeciles to excel in some 

 ways. In that class may be found calculating experts, chess-players, 

 or mechanical draughtsmen. 



Imbecile persons may be taught sufficiently to prepare for the 

 simple duties of life. There are, however, many transitions between 

 the complete imbecile, the mild imbecile, and the merely slow and 

 dull. That is why the condition is frequently not appreciated. 

 In his school the imbecile child is slightly or considerably behind 

 his class, and the laughing-stock of the rest. As he is intellectually 

 slow, so he is morally perverse or is made to become so. He knows 

 enough to lie and libel, to run away from school, and from truant 

 to become a vagrant. It is true it will not do to declare the imbe- 

 cile per se identical with the typical criminal, but as many of them 

 are illegitimate, or of defective or alcoholic parents, or maltreated 

 at home, or diseased and deformed, they get, by necessity, into 

 conflict with order and the law. Thompson found 218 congenital 

 imbeciles among 943 penitentiary inmates; Knecht, 41 amongst 

 1214. When the imbecile is once a prisoner his condition is not 

 liable to be noticed on account of the stupefying monotony of his 

 existence. 



What is more to be pitied, the fate of the immature or imbecile 

 half-grown child that naturally acts differently from the normal, 

 or the low condition of the state which, instead of procuring sep- 

 arate schools or asylums for the half-witted, has nothing to offer 

 but contumely and prison walls, increasing moral deterioration? 

 There is the stone instead of the bread, of the gospel. 



Modern society has commenced, however, to mend old injustices. 

 Every civilized country admits irresponsibility before the law 

 below a certain age, and gradually the mental condition of the 

 criminal is taken into consideration and made the subject of study. 

 But still thousands of children and adolescents are declared crim- 

 inal before being matured. The establishment of children's courts 

 is one of the things, imperfect though they be, that make us see 

 the promised land from afar. When crime shall be considered an 

 anomaly, either congenital or acquired in childhood, a disease; 

 when society shall cease to insist upon committing a brutality to 

 avenge a brutality; when self-protection shall take the place of 

 revenge, and asylums that of state prisons then we shall be a 

 human, because humane, society. 



