l condition.

It is now twenty-one years since this noble philanthropist, then just
entering upon the duties of his profession, was first led by some
incidents occurring during a tour in the Bernese Alps to investigate the
condition of the cretin. For three years he devoted himself to the study
of the disease and the method of treating it. Two years of this period
were spent in the small village of Seruf, in the Canton Glarus, where he
was successful in restoring several to the use of their limbs. It was at
the end of this period, that, with a moral courage and devotion of which
history affords but few examples, Doctor Guggenbuehl resolved to dedicate
his life to the elevation of the cretins from their degraded condition.
Consecrating his own property to the work, he asked assistance from the
Canton Bern in the purchase of land for a hospital, and received a
grant of six hundred francs ($120) for the work. His investigations had
satisfied him that an elevated and dry locality was desirable, and that
it was only the young who could be benefited. He accordingly purchased,
in 1840, a tract of about forty acres of land, comprising a portion of
the hill called the Abendberg, in the Canton Bern, above Interlachen.
The site of his Hospital buildings is about four thousand feet above the
sea, and one or two hundred feet below the summit of the hill; it is
well protected from the cold winds, and the soil is tolerably fertile.

There are few spots, even among the Alps, which can compare with the
Abendberg in beauty and grandeur of scenery. Doctor Guggenbuehl was
led to select it as much for this reason as for its salubrity, in the
belief, which his subsequent experience has fully justified, that the
striking nobleness of the landscape would awaken, even in the torpid
mind of the cretin, that sense of the beautiful in Nature which would
materially aid in his intellectual culture.

On the southern slope of the Abendberg he erected his Hospital
buildings, plain, wooden structures, without ornament, but comfortable,
and well adapted to his purpose. Here he gathered about thirty cretin
children, mostly under ten years of age, and began his work.

To understand fully what was to be accomplished, in order to transform
the young cretin into an active, healthy child, it is necessary that we
should glance at his physical and mental condition, when placed under
treatment.

Cretinism seems to be a combination of two diseases, the one phy