Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Fart I. IDIOCY. Synonyms.—Named by Savage, Amentia; by Segar, ImbeciUitas ingenii; by Vogel, Fatuitas ingenii; by Linnaeus, Morosis; by Cullen and Foder6, Demence innte; by Willis, Stupiditas ; by Pinel, Idioiism ; by some English writers, Idiotcy; by Esquirol and the majority of Encyclopaedias and Dictionaries, Idiocy. We shall use this latter term to express the physiological infirmity; and would like to see the name given to it by Pinel, Idiotism, preserved to express the specific condition of mind pertaining to idiocy. Its definitions have been so numerous, they are so different one from the other, and they have so little bearing on the treatment, that their omission cannot be much felt in a practical treatise. Our own, if objectionable, will be found at least to correspond to a plan of treatment, both supporting each other; and may suffice until a better definition and a better treatment can be devised. Idiocy is a specific infirmity of the cranio-spinal axis, produced by deficiency of nutrition in utero and in neo-nati. It incapacitates mostly the functions which give rise to the reflex, instinctive, and conscious phenomena of life; consequently, the idiot moves, feels, understands, wills, but imperfectly; does nothing, thinks of nothing, cares for nothing (extreme cases), he is a minor legally irresponsible;isolated, without associations; a soul shut up in imperfect organs, an innocent. The modus operandi of deficiency of nutrition in the first period of life has not yet been fully investigated; it may bear upon all the tissues, but we are concerned here mostly with its action on the nervous system. At the time when deficiency of nutrition takes place it stops the foetal progress, and gives permanency to the transitory type through which the foetus was ...