The Surgical Treatment of Idiocy

Extract

The fact that considerable attention has been drawn of late years, both in the medical and lay press, to the subject of operations undertaken for the relief of idiocy and other mental deficiencies of child-life, must be my excuse for taking up the time of this section with observations resting, not alone upon my own limited experience, but largely on that of others. The operation of craniectomy, or as some prefer to call it linear craniotomy (that is the cutting out of strips of bone from the skull), has, indeed, almost passed from the domain of science to the region of romance, and articles have appeared in several of our popular magazines under such sensational titles as “Creating a Mind,” which have led parents of mentally-deficient children to form extravagant conceptions of the powers of surgery in this direction. It may not, therefore, be inappropriate for medical men to weigh and measure the evidence which has accumulated during the last five years as to the possibilities and impossibilities of operative interference in these cases.