Mental diseases / by Frederick Peterson.

  • Peterson, Frederick, 1859-1938.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental diseases / by Frederick Peterson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    alternately hemmed with red and blue leather; to tie knots, with the aid of a pad upon which are spread strings of divers colors. Stringing beads and buttons, sticking pins into a pincushion covered with dotted stuff, and the use of the size-board and form-board are useful means of developing tactile sense, educating the eye, and bringing out some of the faculty of calculation. The Education of the Bye.—After the physician lias remedied any existing visual delects, it becomes the duty of the instructor to interest the restless and inattentive eye. As already mentioned, the attention is aroused by glittering and striking objects, and, once the gaze is captured, the latent sense may be drawn out by many devices familiar to the kindergartner and teacher. Particolored balls, variegated shapes and colors of blocks, spheres, squares, cubes, illuminated pictures, gaudy stuffs, the spectrum, the kaleidoscope—all of these play a role in the education of the vision of the defective pupil. The matching of ribbons, wools, or cards, and the discrimination of forms of blocks, are methods of aiding the higher development of the visual sense. The size- and form-boards already alluded to, and the use of graduated rods to be placed by the pupil in step-like rows, are excellent adjuncts. Later on come into play various games,—dominoes, ball, croquet, mar- bles, bean-bag, hoops, tennis, skipping, battledore and shuttlecock, quoits, golf, and the like,—in the employment of all of which not only is the vision stimulated and improved, but there is a gain in manual dexterity, and an associated development of some of the psychic functions. The teacher acquires a special tact in leading the pupil to concentrate his mind upon what is being done, and in making use of the instinct of imitation, so that the child endeavors to do as the other pupils are doing or to follow the movements of the instructor. Education of the Sense of Hearing.—After the physician has made sure that defective hearing is due rather to want of attention than to any of the many causes of deafness, the teacher experiments upon the sense with sounds of various kinds—gongs, bells, speech, instru- mental music, and songs—and by some one of these means the ear will at last be reached and kept open until it becomes an avenue for im- pressions from the environment to travel to the brain for registration and the rousing of new cerebral activities. This organ in the defective is often especially alive to the influences of melody and harmony, to songs and jingles and rimes. Music is an efficient aid in the various drills and games made use of later on in the child's mental development. Education of the Taste and Smell.—While these senses have not the importance of the three just described, it is still useful to stimulate and develop them as far as possible. The child can be taught to discriminate between the simple taste sensations—salt, sweet, bitter, and sour—by means of solutions of salt, sugar, quinin, and citric acid, and between odors that are noisome and odors that arc pleasant by means of tinctures of asafetida, cloves, and musk, and divers perfumes. Later, he learns to distinguish flavors, and to associate what is good and useful with pleasant, and what is hurtful with noxious tastes and smells.