[216] Blackstone, vol. i. p. 304 (edit. 1783).
[217] "Fatuus et idiota existit, ita quod regimini sui ipsius terrarum, tenementorum, bonorum, et catallorum suorum non sufficit." "Si A. fatuus et idiota sit, sicut prædictum est, necne; et si sit, tunc utrum a nativitate suâ, aut ab alio tempore; et si ab alio tempore, tunc a quo tempore; qualiter et quomodo; et si lucidis gaudeat intervallis ... et quis propinquoir hæres ejus sit, et cujus ætatis."
[218] "Quia A. idiota, et adio impotens ac mentis suæ non compos existit, quod regimini sui ipsius, terrarum, vel aliorum bonorum non sufficit." "Si idiota sit, et mentis suæ non compos, sicut prædictum est, necne."
[219] "A nativitatis suæ tempore semper hactenus purus idiotâ extiterit ... an per infortunium vel alio modo in hujus modi infirmitatem postea inciderit; ... an si per infortunium vel alio modo, tunc per quod infortunium, et qualiter, et quomodo, et cujus ætatis fuerit."
Attention has of late been freshly drawn to this unfortunate class. We propose in this chapter to give some particulars respecting their past history, their numbers, their location, and the claims, not yet sufficiently recognized, which they have upon the public and the State, with a few suggestions in regard to the legislation required to meet these claims.
The terms "idiots" and "imbeciles" are popularly employed with great vagueness, and the latter by even medical men in more senses than one.
Among the Greeks an idiot was a private, as opposed to a public or a professional person. He was unskilled, unlearned; and early English writers use it in this sense. Thus Wiclif translates 1 Cor. xiv. 16, "For if thou blessist in speyrit; who filleth the place of an _idiot_, hou schal he sae amen on thi blessyng." Chaucer similarly employs the word. It is easy to understand its gradual transition to the exclusive sense in which it has for long been employed.
It is not necessary to distinguish between idiocy and imbecility (Lat., weakness, feebleness) further than this, that an idiot is at the very bottom of the scale of beings born with defective mental powers, while he who labours under imbecility or feeble mindedness is understood to be one much less completely deprived of power. Strictly speaking, these terms ought to be rigidly restricted to states of mind at birth, but this has been found to be practically inconvenient, if not impossible, because changes occurring in the brain in very early life impair the functions of that organ so completely as to induce the same helpless condition which is found in congenital cases. We dismiss now one distinction which has been drawn between idiocy and imbecility--that the former is, and that the latter is not, necessarily congenital; one arising from the supposition that infantile mental deficiency is less likely to be so grave an affection than that which has been present from the moment of existence. Besides, the term is constantly being applied in common parlance to those who, originally of sound mind, have in adult life lost their faculties.