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The Surgical Treatment of Idiocy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

G. E. Shuttleworth*
Affiliation:
Ancaster House, Richmond Hill

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.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1896

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References

Read at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, London, 1895.Google Scholar

Starr's “Brain Surgery,” p. 262.Google Scholar

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