Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/50

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
24
LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD

and stuff them into his mouth. The companion senses of touch, taste and smell, were so dull that the most delicious fragrance gave him no pleasure, and he swallowed disgusting things without any feeling of revolt. He could not fix his eyes, nor walk like a human being, nor shed tears, nor feel when he was bruised or burned. His restoration to humanity appears to have come through the education, first of all, of the lower senses, baths, massage, and treatment by an electric battery; and as this treatment began to take effect, taste-training through the offering of sweet and bitter things. Groping his way in the darkness (for little was then known of brain physiology in its relation to education), Itard succeeded after a time in awaking the dormant areas of this neglected brain, so that the wild boy began to feel heat and cold, consented to put on clothes (at first he ran naked in the garden in mid-winter), walked like a human being on two feet and with measured steps, shed tears, showed signs of gratitude, and joy, and sympathy, and even began to learn to speak.

Sometimes the lower sense doors are closed violently, and then there is sudden panic and breaking loose in what we may call the upper stories of the brain. "A young man, clever and rational,"