Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/406

386 Experimental proofs of the efficiency of these methods are also forthcoming. Among them, perhaps, none are more convincing



than the results secured in the modern training schools for idiots, in which difficult field the late Dr. Edward Séguin, of New York, distinguished himself not only as an investigator of remarkable insight and originality, but as a humanitarian of a high order.

At the meeting of the British Association in 1879, Dr. Séguin read a paper entitled "The Training of an Idiotic Hand," in which are given the details of his developmental method of teaching in the case of an idiot boy. The training described was applied mainly to the hands, over which the feeble will of the child had almost no control. He was unable to put either his fingers or hands in any given required attitude, although movements of great rapidity and considerable force were involuntarily executed, mainly from the wrist. The sense of touch was also almost wholly