of these. Misfortune has opened the door as usual to this kind of study, and there have not been wanting persons in every age, who answered to the still, beckoning finger. There have been, as we can see, doctor teachers in all ages. A very notable group of these were active in France at the end of the eighteenth century. One of these, Father Itard (he was a priest, though he did the work of a doctor) had a strange pupil, the wild boy of Aveyron, and was led through him to make a study of the lower senses—touch, taste, and smell.
Many people know the story of the wild boy of Aveyron! How one day three French hunters, looking for game in a wood, came across a naked boy of twelve, who fled from them like a wild beast and tried to hide himself in a tree. In point of fact he was a wild human being, and perhaps the hunters had heard rumours of him. In any case they ran after him, captured him, and carried him off to a village, where they put him under the charge of a poor widow. The poor woman did not know very well how to deal with him, and he very soon escaped from her and ran back to the woods. There he roamed free for a while, but one very cold day he wandered, as hungry wolves sometimes do, very close to human habitations. He even ventured into
