Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/328

 316 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

When we come to deal with special classes of dependents, we encounter a series of professional disciplines and arts. For example, the care of the insane is a branch of the medical art, and only alienists who devote their lives to this department are trusted to speak with highest authority. This is also true of the public care of epileptics. The care of the feeble-minded, idiots, and imbeciles is chiefly a matter of a pedagogical specialty, although medicine and surgery lend important aid, as in physical culture, the thyroid treatment, etc. The care of normal dependent chil- dren is best determined by considerations of general education, and here we are brought into the field of the teacher and to the problems of domestic institutions.

It thus appears that the study of the social treatment of depen- dents makes drafts on almost all the funds of human knowledge, uses all the methods and results of investigation, and employs in turn all the great institutional agencies of the community.

This essay does not profess to announce for the first time any new discoveries or results of special original investigations as yet unpublished, but rather to mark the present stage of knowledge on the matter before us, and to indicate some of the points on the frontier of experiment and research where further data are needed. If, in thus restating the subject, some slight increment to science may be added, it will be incidental to the main purpose of the exposition.

Any attempt to describe even the system of charity in one country would result in a dry, tedious, and disappointing sketch. The essential features of modern methods fill a large volume, and detailed accounts require many volumes. 5

It would seem expedient to select a theme which will lead us to consider the most recent and successful endeavor of students of social science, ( I ) to construct a special discipline which is clearly marked off by its subject-matter and is deserving of independent and systematic treatment; and (2) to consider a method of tak- ing up particular problems of practice, so as to guide experiment into the most economical and promising paths.

Modern Charity Systems, by the writer and others (The Macmillan 66., 1904).