Powers in the Feeble-Miuded.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 213, 30 July 1887, Page 2

Powers in the Feeble-Miuded.

It is a strange but well-known fact that in many persons who are idiotic or but little removed from the mental condition ot idiots, certain powers of the mind may be developed to an extraordinary degree. Remarkable precosity in the powers of arithmetical calculations is frequently combined with a positive deficiency in other directions. In institutions devoted to the care of feeble-minded children such, examples are nearly always present. Deficient in some faculties, others are developed to excess. Some such can carve and draw with great skill. Extraordinary memory is often met with, associated with very great defect of reasoning. One boy, in reading Gibbon's " Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," skipped a line on the third page at his hrst perusal. Ever after, when reciting from memory the stately periods of 'Gibbon, he would, on coming to the lliii-d page, skip the line and retrace Jiis steps, just as when he first committed the passage to memory. Often the memory takes the form of remembering dates and past events. One boy never failed to tell correctly the name and address of every confectioner's shop he had visited in London, and could as readily tell the date of every visit. The faculty of number is usually slightly deve&oped in feeble-minded children, while Raemory is fairly well developed ; yet occasionally the power of mental arithmetic has been developed. Improvisation is an occasional faculty. Memory of tune is a "wsry common faculty among the feeble-minded; they readily acquire simple airs and rarely forget them. In none of the cases of idiot savants has there been any history of the possession of a similar faculty by the parent or sisters or brothers. In one case a necropsy is reported by Dr. J. L. Down, of London. The boy had a .remarkable, indeed perfect, appreciation of past or passing time. There was no difference from an ordinary brain, with the exception that there were two well marked and distinct soft commissures. Dr Down's explanation of the phenomena was that, as every movement of the hoiTse was absolutely punctual, he had data from which he could estimate the time by accurate appreciation of its flux. Every form of mental deviation may be met with in the congenital feeble-minded. They may become the subjects of acute and chronic mania, of acute and chronic melancholia, and of dementia. Occasionally under the influence of acute mania the feeble intelligence of tho youth becomes fanned into a brighter flame. The X taciturn may become loquacious ; the timid and respectful proud and defiant ; the amiable and tractable abusive and destructive. Three remarkable instances occurred to Dr. Down of boys who had never been able to speak making use of Avoll-formed sentences during the high febrile state of acuto pneumonia or scarlatina. It is of much interest to report all such cases, as they throw great light on the workings of the human mind in health.