erlin up to the present time. Herr Saegert is inclined to regard
idiocy as dependent upon the condition of the brain and nervous system,
to a greater extent, perhaps, than Dr. Seguin, and to rely upon
medication to some extent; though in his writings he professes to
consider it a condition, and not a disease.

The success of the efforts of Seguin and Saegert was soon reported
in other countries, and as early as 1846 excited the attention of
philanthropists in England and the United States. Schools for the
training of idiots were established, on a small scale at first, by some
benevolent ladies, at Bath, Brighton, and Lancaster, England. In
1847, an effort was made to establish an institution in some degree
commensurate with the wants of the unfortunate class for whom it
was intended. In this movement, Dr. John Conolly, the father of the
non-restraint system in the treatment of the insane, Rev. Dr. Andrew
Reed, Rev. Edwin Sidney, and Sir S.M. Peto have distinguished themselves
by their zeal and liberality. Extensive buildings were rented at
Highgate, near London, and at Colchester, for the accommodation of
idiotic pupils, while a strenuous and successful effort was made to
obtain the necessary funds for the erection of an asylum of great size.
The Royal Institution for Idiots, completed in 1856, has between four
hundred and five hundred beds, and is already nearly or quite full.
Essex Hall, at Colchester, has also been fitted up as a permanent
establishment for their instruction, and furnishes accommodation for
some two hundred more. Two small institutions, supported by private
beneficence, have also been organized in Scotland.

The British institutions have admitted, to a very considerable extent,
a class of pupils who are not properly idiots, but only persons of
imbecile purpose, or simply awkward, and of partially developed
intellects. Some of these, who have arrived even at the age of
twenty-five or thirty years, have been greatly benefited, and, after
two or three years' instruction, have left the institution with as much
intelligence, apparently, as most of those in the same walk of life.
This result is, and should be, a matter of great gratification to the
managers; but it is hardly just to regard success in such cases as cures
of idiocy. The greater part of the admissions to the Royal Institution
are from the pauper and poor laboring classes; and the simple
substitution of wholesome and sufficient food for a mea