The first idiot that attracted the attention of scientific men was looked upon as a savage man, and every treatise on the subject contains some allusion to the so-called savage of the Aveyron, who excited so much curiosity, speculation, and interest among the psychologists of Paris in the early part of the present century.
In old books on medical nomenclature idiocy was classed amongst the varieties of insanity, and the visitor to a lunatic asylum half a century ago, would find the idiot skulking in the corner of a courtyard chained to a staple, and lying on a litter of straw; in fact, he was considered and treated more like a wild beast than a human being. He had but little talent given, and by neglect or abuse that little was lost; until, growing more and more brutal, he sank unregetting and unregretted into an early grave, without ever being counted as a man. Now, idiocy is not a form of insanity, and it is most important that no confusion should exist in the public mind upon this point, as the association of idiots and insane patients in the same asylum is a positive disadvantage to both classes. It is always a painful thing to see idiot children, whose mental faculties and physical powers, as I shall presently show, are capable of much development and improvement, wandering, without object or special care, about the wards of a Lunatic Asylum. They cannot receive there the training and supervision they specially require, and they often seriously interfere with the comfort of the other inmates, and meet in return, with ridicule and unkindness; moreover, their presence is a serious obstacle to the complete recovery of convalescent lunatics. I desire especially to press this point upon the legislators of the country, and, as in this county, our union houses are far too large for the requirements of the age, I would suggest that one or more of them might, with advantage, be devoted to the care and treatment of pauper idiots.[3]
Insanity is a loss more or less complete of faculties formerly possessed, it consists of a perturbation of the mental faculties after their complete development, it begins with average intelligence which gradually diminishes; whereas idiocy begins with a low amount of intelligence, which, in many instances, gradually increases; the difference has been thus beautifully described by a French psychologist, "_L'homme en démence est privé des biens dont il jouissait autrefois, c'est un riche devenu pauvre. L'idiot a toujours été dans l'infortune et la misère._" (The man that is mad is deprived of possessions which he formerly enjoyed, it is a rich man become poor; whereas the idiot has always been in misfortune and misery.) The distinction between the idiot and the insane is clear and marked. The madman suffers from abnormal development of brain, the idiot from an ill-developed brain--the mind of the madman is not in proper balance, in the idiot it is not in proper power.