R. Dupuy.Medicine and Eugenics.449
word. The principle types of lisping have to do with the letters J., Ch.,
H.., and B. For instance, “ Jap ” for “ lap,” “ shaushe ” for “ sauce/
“ mahine ” for “ marine,” etc.
Several backward people speak with a nasal twang deforming their
vocal or nasal sounds. These last defects of pronunciation are the result of
laziness or contraction of the buccal cavity, or from the increased size or
motor defects of the tongue.
Defects in writing are habitual and correspond with perversions of the
will. The handwriting of the apathetic patients is thick, round, often
regular, but without character, while that of the unstable is irregular, shaky,
and jerky.
Reading is often difficult. Certain children spell words without under
standing them. In writing and in reading we meet a whole series of dis
orders which are comprised under the term aphasia, agraphia, word-deaf -
ness, word-blindness, etc.
The memory of these patients is often extraordinary, to such a degree
that certain backward persons can remember places or persons which they
have only see once ten or fifteen years ago, and their memory for dates is
surprising. Some of these subjects show great talent for arithmetic, music, and
imitation in speech or gesture. Their sensibility is often very high, tears
come readily, cries and complaints are frequent and without reason; for they
have been the object of care and attention which is not spent on ordinary
children. Backward children have almost all habit spasms or manias or phobias of
various kinds; choreic movements and nervous contractions, more or less
localised to certain groups of muscles.
To sum up, looked at from a mental point of view, the backward child
may be an absolute idiot; in this case, whatever his age, his intellectual
faculties correspond to those of a child not more than three to five months
old.The profound idiot corresponds to a normal subject of two years old.
The imbecile has an intelligence equal to a child of two to eight years
old.Diagnosis therefore of idiocy and imbecility cannot be made at birth.
The feeble-minded is a backward person who will always be four to
six years behind his true age.
The backward children, so denominated in relation to their teachers,
are often feeble-minded children who present a perversion of will and atten
tion which gives rise to the apathy and instability of which we have already
spoken. The sensorial anomalies concern the organs of sense, or the manner in
which the patients interpret their sensations. In either case we find, as
always, backwardness and perversion.GG
