Minnesota all private asylums must be licensed by the board of managers of the public hospitals. And, lastly, the State Board of Health of New Hampshire serves as a lunacy commission in that state. It must, through a representative, visit all institutions caring for the insane at least once each four months, and records of all patients received at hospitals must be filed with it within three days.[1]
III. THE IDIOTIC AND FEEBLE-MINDED.
The third class of defectives to receive special attention was the idiotic and feeble-minded youth. Like the blind and the deaf and dumb, such persons require special institutions for their education and treatment. Twenty-three states now provide special facilities for their education and treatment, nineteen in state institutions, four in private institutions or in the public institutions of the neighboring states. Where special provision has not been made for this class, large numbers of them are found in the almshouses. Where special provision has been made, it is, as a rule, very inadequate for the care of all.[2]
Although the curative and custodial element has constantly become more prominent, historically the primary purpose of the organization of the institutions for the feeble-minded was that of affording educational facilities for them. The four states of Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont now make provision for the education of the feeble-minded and the imbecile, as well as the blind, in private institutions or in the public institutions of the neighboring states.[3] In Minnesota,
- ↑ 32-36, ch. 10.
- ↑ For an excellent article, giving the statistics of the public institutions for the feeble-minded in the nineteen states, see F. M. Powell's paper on the "Care of the Feeble-minded," Report of the N. C. C. C., 1897, pp. 287-302.
The twenty-four institutions of these nineteen states care for 8,492 feeble-minded persons. The census of 1890 reports 95,609 such persons in the United States. This shows that the great majority of this class of defectives is, as yet, unprovided for.
Dr. Fernald, in the Report of the N. C. C. C. for 1893, gives a detailed history up to that time of the institutions for the feeble-minded in the several states. A table taken from that paper, giving the location, date of organization, and capacity of the several institutions, may be found on p. 278 of Warner's American Charities. The table given by Mr. Powell, however, gives more complete and more recent data.
- ↑ The statutes of Delaware (by an act of February 22, 1861) provide that indigent,
