These diseases are distressing to
parents and friends, and he who succeeds in restoring them to health,
intelligence, and the enjoyment of life, accomplishes a great and good
work; but it does not necessarily follow that the cases where the mental
degeneration is as complete as the physical would as readily yield to
treatment; and we are driven to the conviction that the enthusiasm and
zeal of Dr. Guggenbuehl have led him to exaggerate the measure of success
attained in these cases of low grade, and thus to excite hopes which
could never be fulfilled.[A]
[Footnote A: Dr. F. Kern, Superintendent of the Idiot School at
Gohlis, near Leipzig, in an article in the _Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer
Psychiatrie_, published the present year, (1857,) states that he
examined a boy in the Abendberg Hospital in 1853, of whom Dr. Guggenbuehl
had said, in his work _Upon the Cure of Cretinism_, published a few
months previously, that, "after the painstaking examination of Dr.
Naville, he was held to be capable of entering a training school for
teachers, in order to qualify himself for a teacher": Dr. Kern found
that he knew neither the day of the week or the mouth, nor his birthday,
nor his age.]
There are four other institutions in Germany devoted wholly or in part
to the treatment of cretins; they are located at Bendorf, Mariaberg,
Winterbach, and Hubertsburg.
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