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Among the number mentioned there are seven who are deaf-mutes. There is with all of these more or less of mental deficiency aside from the deafness. The failure to speak follows the deafness. But of some of them the probabilities are that they would not speak if they had had their hearing. Their intelligence is not adequate to speech.

There are nine who are partially deaf, and whose deafness modified their acquirement of language and speech.

There are eight who are paralyzed to a greater or less degree, where the defect or impairment of speech is in part the result of the paralysis. There is one where chorea has had the same effect to embarrass utterance, as in the preceding case.

Regarding the above as somewhat exceptional cases, we may divide the remainder -- two hundred and twenty-five in number -- into the following general classes: (2)

First. Those who neither speak nor comprehend language; they are like new-born infants in that respect. Of these, in whom the faculty of language has not been awakened, the number is twenty-four (24).

Case No. 1. -- A girl eight years old; tall, slender, and with regular features. There were few if any external impressions that would produce even reflex motion in her. One could prick her with a pin, and there would be no withdrawal of the part suffering; she would simply scream, and throw out her limbs in vague and purposeless movements. There was, thus, the sensation of feeling, but without the practical use for which sensation is given. Simple reflex movement should be invariable in accordance with some physical law, but in some forms of what are called reflex movements intelligence somewhere of a certain kind is manifest in directing or modifying them. This girl would allow the ball of her eye to be touched without winking or betraying any consciousness of the finger, or any effort of the will to avoid the infliction. There was no definite sensation of sight.

She did not stand or sit alone, or manifest any fear of falling. She did not hold anything in her hand. She could not be fed except by placing the food back in the mouth within the reach of the organs of deglutition.

She did not use her ears sufficiently to distinguish tones of affection from tones of anger. She did not notice the direction of sounds. Shortly before she was brought to the institution she surprised her family by humming a part of an air frequently performed in her hearing on a piano. This was regarded as a proof of a change in her mental condition for the better. She had never noticed any articulate sounds. She never seemed to have any desire to make them, and certainly made no effort to produce them. Besides, she never noticed or attempted to use any other form of expression.

There is what may be called animal expression that is instinctive, but it is in the form of reflex movements and inarticulate sounds. When we come to the expression of wants or feelings, even by signs, much more the communication of ideas, there must be a conscious individuality to experience the want or feeling, to perceive the mode by which such wants and feelings are expressed, with a will or impulse to use such mode in its own behalf, by starting the well-planned and complicated mechanisms by which articulate speech is produced.

In this particular case there was no open communication with the brain of the child except the feeble appreciation of musical sounds that had forced their way inward through the passive sense of hearing, awakening a slight disposition to listen. There was only a faint impulse to responsive imitation. There was no responsive or intuitive exercise of will to produce articulate sounds. There was no power to execute the volition if it had existed. This was true not only of speech, but of all forms of expression.

Case No. 2. -- A boy eleven years old, -- could walk, having learned to do so before the access of the convulsions that caused his idiocy. But he walked without heeding his steps. There were but two or three objects that he ever held in his hand or attempted to grasp. He would take food in his hand and carry it to his mouth. Tormented with a constant thirst, he would carry a cup of water to his lips, dropping the cup as soon as it was emptied. Dropping scarcely expresses it; when the want was satisfied his grasp relaxed and the cup fell. His only plaything was a bunch of strings that he shook before his eyes, intercepting the light. The organs of sight and hearing were perfect, as his after-education proved; but he used the former only in relation to food and the single plaything referred to; the latter never, that I could discover, though experiments were made upon him with firearms and all sorts of surprises in the way of sounds. There was no perception of articulate sounds, no imitation and no attempt to utter them. The dormant mind knew no language, remembered no language, and attempted none.