See Helyot, _Histoire des ordres religieux_ (1715), iv. c. 4; Max Heimbucher, _Orden u. Kongregationen_ (1907), ii. § 83; Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopädie_ (ed. 3), art. "Birgitta"; A. Hamilton in _Dublin Review_, 1888, "The Nuns of Syon."
BRIDGMAN, FREDERICK ARTHUR (1847- ), American artist, was born at Tuskegee, Alabama, on the 10th of November 1847. He began as a draughtsman in New York for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art School and at the National Academy of Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of J.L. Gérôme. Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large and important composition, "The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile," in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the cross of the Legion of Honour. Other paintings by him were "An American Circus in Normandy," "Procession of the Bull Apis" (now in the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington), and a "Rumanian Lady" (in the Temple collection, Philadelphia).
BRIDGMAN, LAURA DEWEY (1829-1889), American blind deaf-mute, was born on the 21st of December 1829 at Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A., being the third daughter of Daniel Bridgman (d. 1868), a substantial Baptist farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and grand-daughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed sight and hearing, blunted the sense of smell, and left her system a wreck. Though she gradually recovered health she remained a blind deaf-mute, but was kindly treated and was in particular made a sort of playmate by an eccentric bachelor friend of the Bridgmans, Mr Asa Tenney, who as soon as she could walk used to take her for rambles a-field. In 1837 Mr James Barrett, of Dartmouth College, saw her and mentioned her case to Dr Mussey, the head of the medical department, who wrote an account which attracted the attention of Dr S.G. Howe (_q.v._), the head of the Perkins Institution for the Blind at Boston. He determined to try to get the child into the Institution and to attempt to educate her; her parents assented, and in October 1837 Laura entered the school. Though the loss of her eye-balls occasioned some deformity, she was otherwise a comely child and of a sensitive and affectionate nature; she had become familiar with the world about her, and was imitative in so far as she could follow the actions of others; but she was limited in her communication with others to the narrower uses of touch--patting her head meant approval, rubbing her hand disapproval, pushing one way meant to go, drawing another to come. Her mother, preoccupied with house-work, had already ceased to be able to control her, and her father's authority was due to fear of superior force, not to reason. Dr Howe at once set himself to teach her the alphabet by touch. It is impossible, for reasons of space, to describe his efforts in detail. He taught words before the individual letters, and his first experiment consisting in pasting upon several common articles such as keys, spoons, knives, &c., little paper labels with the names of the articles printed in raised letters, which he got her to feel and differentiate; then he gave her the same labels by themselves, which she learnt to associate with the articles they referred to, until, with the spoon or knife alone before her she could find the right label for each from a mixed heap. The next stage was to give her the component letters and teach her to combine them in the words she knew, and gradually in this way she learnt all the alphabet and the ten digits, &c. The whole process depended, of course, on her having a human intelligence, which only required stimulation, and her own interest in learning became keener as she progressed. On the 24th of July 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly. Dr Howe devoted himself with the utmost patience and assiduity to her education and was rewarded by increasing success. On the 20th of June 1840 she had her first arithmetic lesson, by the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated by Dr Howe as his daughter. Her case already began to interest the public, and others were brought to Dr Howe [v.04 p.0559] for treatment.