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Tenth Annual Report Of The Trustees Of The Perkins Institution And Massachusetts Asylum For The Blind

Creator: Samuel Gridley Howe (author)
Date: 1842
Source: Perkins School for the Blind

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The following extracts will show her idea about the seat of sensation. "During the lesson to-day, Laura stopped suddenly, and holding her forehead, said, 'I think very hard; was I baby did I think?' meaning, when I was a baby did I think, &c.

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"Again, Laura came to me to-day, saying, 'Doctor will come in fourteen days, I think in my head?.' Asked her if she did not think in her side and heart. 'No,' said she, 'I cannot think in heart; I think in head.' Why? 'I cannot know; all little girls cannot know about heart.'" When she is disappointed, or a friend is sick, and she is at all sad, she says, "My heart aches; when heart aches, does blood run?" She had been told about the blood circulating, but supposed that it did so only when she could feel it. "Does blood run in my eyes; I cannot feel eyes-blood run." One day, when probably her brain was fatigued, she said, "Why cannot I stop (6) to think? I cannot help to think all days; do you stop to think? does Harrison stop to think now he is dead?" This was just after the President's death, an event about which the blind children had talked much among themselves and to Laura.


(6) Why cannot I cease thinking? I cannot help thinking all the time.

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And here, upon giving what seem to me the child's notions about death, it will be proper to remark that they are less curious and valuable to the psychologist than they would have been had she been more completely isolated. Within the last year, she has acquired great facility of conversing with other persons, and of course may have received notions from them. It would have been perfectly easy to isolate her by adopting an arbitrary system of signs, and not teaching it to others; but this would have been great injustice to the child, because the only possible way to make her familiar with language, was constant opportunity of exercising it as fast as she learned it. Now, no teacher could be with her always; and if she could, a teacher cannot be a child, and Laura craved at times the society of children.

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Strong, therefore, as was the temptation to improve this rare opportunity of watching the development of mind, (for it seemed like looking at mind with a microscope,) it was not to be listened to a moment, even though a revelation of the whole arcana of thought were to have been the reward.

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Great caution, however, has been used with regard to the manner of her intercourse with others, and to the persons also. Latterly she has shown much less desire to be with children than when she could use only a few words, and when she delighted to frolic and romp with them. She will now sit quietly alone by the hour, writing or sewing, and occasionally indulging in a soliloquy, or an imaginary dialogue.

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But to return to her notion of death, which leads us rather from the intellectual to the moral part of her nature. The attachment to life is such a strong and universal feeling, that if any thing deserves the name of an innate sense, this certainly does. It acts, however, instinctively and blindly, and, I doubt not, influences Laura's feelings, and causes her to shrink from any thing which may alarm her love of existence by suggesting that it may cease. It appears she had been carried to a funeral, before she came here, though I could never obtain any satisfactory account from any one of the impression it made upon her; indeed, it was impossible then to do any thing more than guess, from her appearance, what was passing in her mind. She can now herself describe the feeling that then agitated her on touching for the first time a corpse. She was acquainted with two little girls, sisters, in Cambridge, Adeline and Elizabeth. Adeline died during the year before last. Not long since, in giving her a lesson in geography, her teacher began to describe Cambridge; the mention of Cambridge called up a new subject, and she asked, "Did you see Adeline in box? " I answered, Yes. "She was very cold, and not smooth; ground made her rough." I tried to change the subject here, but it was in vain; she wished to know how long the box was, &c.; she said, "Drew told me about Adeline; did she feel? Did Elizabeth cry and feel sick? I did not cry because I did not think much about it." She then drew in her hands shudderingly, as if cold. I asked her what was the matter. She said, "I thought about (how) I was afraid to feel of dead man before I came here, when I was very little girl with my mother; I felt of dead head's eyes and nose; I thought it was man's; I did not know." Now, it is impossible that any one could have said any thing to her on the subject; she could not know whether the state the man was in, was temporary or lasting; she knew only that there was a human being, once moving and breathing like herself, but now confined in a coffin, cold, and still, and stiff, -- in a state which she could not comprehend, but which nature made her recoil from.

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During the past year, she all at once refused to eat meat, and, being asked why, she said, "Because it is dead." I pushed the inquiry, and found she had been in the kitchen, and felt of a dead turkey, from which she suddenly recoiled. She continued disinclined to eat flesh for some weeks, but gradually she came to her appetite again; and now, although she understands that fowls, sheep, calves, &c., are killed to furnish meat, she eats it with relish.

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