The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases

First. To moderate their expectations as to the results of any, even the best devised and most successful treatment. The child who has been born of weak intellect, or who has become so as the result of illness, will always remain at a lower level than others, and this, even though some one faculty, as the musical faculty, or the power of calculation, should be above the average.

Secondly. From the child's earliest infancy to occupy themselves in perfecting as far as possible the physical powers and aptitudes, and the habits of cleanliness and order. Development of mind waits on development of body: to stand, to sit, to walk, to grasp an object put into the hand, are essential to bringing the idiot child into relation with the world around it; are its elementary education, to be given patiently, cheerfully, lovingly, even for years together. To attend to its natural wants, and by fixed routine to accustom it at stated hours to empty its bowels and its bladder is a lesson hard to teach; and not less difficult is it to make the child learn to masticate its food, to drink without slobbering, and then to use the spoon and fork, and to feed itself; and afterwards to dress itself, to wash itself, to tie its shoestrings; for idiots almost without exception are awkward as well as lazy.

The common class of nurses, even the very kindest, find it so much easier to feed the child, to wash it, and to dress it, than to teach it to do any of these things for itself, that it too often grows up, till too old to remain in the nursery, without having made the slightest advance above the condition of completest babyhood. It is absolutely essential either that the mother should devote herself solely to the care and teaching of the idiot, or that she should engage a nurse who will have no other duty. Such a person must be above the average in education and intelligence, and of course will command more than the ordinary wages. The mother, too, must resign herself to the little one's affection being transferred in a great degree from herself to the person who has constant charge of it—a hard trial this, but one to which, for her child's good, she must bring herself to submit.

Thirdly. So soon as the child has been taught at home to exercise these lower powers, and the question of what is termed its education arises, it is a matter of absolute necessity that he be sent to an institution specially set apart for the feeble-minded. It is absolutely impossible with the most devoted love and the most lavish expenditure of money, to do at home what can be, and is constantly, accomplished even in a pauper idiot asylum. The imitative faculty, which is usually very strongly marked in the idiot, furnishes one great means of his improvement; while besides there are many of the moral powers which cannot be brought out except in the society of other children of his own age and not differing too widely from him in mental power.

I have warned, and I repeat the warning, against exaggerated expectations as to the results of even the wisest treatment. To teach cleanliness, order, and neatness; to impart knowledge enough to enable the idiot to take care of himself; to develop his affections; to enable him to read and write; to practise some easy handicraft; to partake of some simple pleasures, and so at length to return to the shelter of his own home, and to be there, not an object to be hidden away, too painful to look upon, but an object rather of special tenderness, repaying with his guileless love the sad self-sacrifice of his parents for many a year; these are endeavours almost sure of accomplishment in a well-conducted institution, sure never to be realised in a home.

I have often sent afflicted parents, who shrank from parting with their children, to one institution near London; and I doubt not there are others in England, where pains, and care, and skill, and untiring love awake the slumbering intellect, arouse the dormant affections, and work miracles of healing on these helpless little ones.