But what to do with those now in our midst is the vital question! They must be provided for in a way that shall insure safety to society, economy to the State, and protection and happiness to the individual. The answer found in the experience of half a century is, briefly, asylums for the helpless--training schools and colonies for those capable of becoming helpful. These in very name and nature being widely separate, just as separate as titles and names indicate, should be their working systems. Work among the feeble-minded, a philanthropic movement directed first toward the idiot, soon found a limit in dealing with a subject not trainable and but slightly if at all improvable. Thence, diverging and broadening as idiocy became better understood and imbecility in various phases became recognized, it found its true province in strengthening and encouraging feeble intellects, arousing and stimulating indolent and weak wills, and in training and directing into healthful channels the abnormal energy of those destitute of the moral sense. How wide the divergence can readily be seen, as also how entirely incompatible with union must be work further apart in reality than is the training of an imbecile and a normal child.
[Illustration: EXCITABLE IDIOT. Practically unimprovable.
APATHETIC IDIOT. Practically unimprovable.
IDIO-IMBECILE. But slight hope of improvement.]
For the idiot, who not only can not be trained, but who in many cases is unimprovable even in the simplest matters of self-help, nothing is needed but that care and attention found in every well-regulated nursery of delicate children, the _sine qua non_ being regular hours, simple nourishing food, frequent baths, and tender mothering. As many are paralyzed, blind, lame, or epileptic, it is desirable that the dormitories, well ventilated, be on the same floor with the living rooms and of easy access to bathrooms and playgrounds. Covered and carefully guarded porches should afford the much-needed fresh air and outdoor life in all weathers. These, with cheerful, sunny playrooms, provided with simple toys and furnished with bright decorations varying with the season, will contribute the maximum of pleasure for this life of perpetual infancy. Low vitality, general poverty of the whole physical make-up, the prevalence of phthisis and epilepsy and kindred diseases require the daily inspection of a physician, while the comfort and well-being of the whole, both workers and children, are insured by a capable and sympathetic house mother.