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 ab