52 On Idiocy. [Jan., 



most stupid of perfect mankind, was not noticed by the Roman 

 alienist physicians. 



There are no notices of idiots in the time of Arabian learning, 

 when Europe was linked on to civilization by its clergy ; and the 

 affliction is never seen, so it is said, amongst the pure Arabs of 

 the present day, who continue generation after generation to marry 

 their uncles' daughters as a matter of course. This intermarriage 

 occurs in many nations, living in what we call a very absurdly 

 savage state, and yet idiots are either rare or absent amongst 

 them. 



The history of idiocy is then to be written in a very small space, 

 yet the condition is one of the greatest curses of modern times. 



There are at least 10,000 pauper idiots in England and Wales, 

 and there are 1760 idiots confined in workhouses and lunatic 

 asylums in Ireland, but how many there are out of doors is un- 

 known. In France there are 2 5 idiots born in every 1000 births. 

 There are no statistics that can decide how many idiots there are 

 in private families in Great Britain, but every alienist physician 

 knows then number is legion. They are kept out of the way, shut 

 up, being looked upon as a disgrace to the family, for people 

 do not discriminate between the causes that give idiots to the 

 drunken and reprobate, and those that induce idiocy in the families 

 of the purest in mind and who lead the gentlest of lives. There is 

 no greater trial in a family than the presence of an idiot child, for 

 it not only attracts too much maternal care, but it affords, as it 

 grows, a bad example to the other children. Supposing that there 

 are two idiots born for every thousand of healthy children, what a 

 mass of hidden suffering there must be around us for which there 

 is hardly any relief. 



The percentage of idiots increased in Ireland as the general 

 population diminished after the famine and during the subsequent 

 emigration ; it is very large in France, whose population is at a 

 standstill; it is great in North America, where the population is 

 most mixed ; and it is greater in those English counties where there 

 is an agricultural population, earning poor wages and looking to the 

 Union as their haven of rest, than in the others. In Herefordshire 

 there were, a year or two since, 111 idiots (pauper) in 106,796 in- 

 habitants, or 1 in 962 ; in Wiltshire, 237 pauper idiots in 236,027 

 inhabitants, or 1 in 995 ; in Berkshire, 200 pauper idiots in 205,625 

 inhabiants, or 1 in 1028; and in North Wales, there is a pauper 

 idiot for every 906 souls. With these figures before us it is of no 

 use hiding our national skeleton; the closet-door is opened every 

 year during the census of pauperdom, and the grim fact constantly 

 increases. Possessing what we call the highest civilization, we 

 European and North American nations produce more useless 

 children than those savages who have little or no civilization. 



