solutely 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.

INDEX.

Abdomen, large, its importance exaggerated, 158
---- tenderness of, very important, 158

Acute constitutional diseases, 187

Aperients, 23

Artificial feeding, its dangers, 45
---- ---- rules for, 50
---- ---- sometimes necessary, 49, 58
---- ---- substitutes for milk, 59

Asses' milk best substitute for human, 51

Asthma, 145

Atrophy, infantile, 45
---- its causes and symptoms, 47
---- symptoms essentially different from consumption, 48, 62
---- may depend on consumption, 61

Backwardness, 224

Bath, warm, management of, 19
---- ---- when to be used in convulsions, 91

Bed, importance of, in illness, 16

Bedsores, how to prevent, and treat, 18

Bedstead, best form of, for children, 17

Brain, disease of, cry in, 5
---- ---- proofs of absence of, 10
---- and nervous system, mortality from diseases of, 88