Kansas City daily journal., 1897-01-25
ATTITUDES In IDIOTS.
PECULIAR POWERS DUE TO MEMORY
AND FACILITY OF IMITATION.
Astonishing Special Aptitudes Exhib-
ited by Many IdiOts-BIind Tom,
the Georgia Musical Prod
igy, n Notable Example.
From the New York Sun.


DIR. Frederick Peterson discusses in the
last number of the Popular Science Month
ly the very astonishing special aptitudes
exhibited by many idiots who have become
notable as musical prodigies," lightning
calculators" and the like. He designates
them in the title of his paper as Idiots
Savants.' and shows that their peculiar
powers, due chiefly to extraordinary mem
ory, visual or auditory, and facility in imi-
tation, go with the lowest order of general
intellectual ability marking the congeni-
lively defective and the degenerate.
OF course, a notable example of such spe-
cial aptitudes is Blind Tom." the Georgia
musical prodigy" He was born blind and
his intelligence was confined to sound. He
learned to repeat words readily, but they
had no meaning TO him, his own spontane-
Gus language, according to Dr. Peterson,
being little more than inarticulate sounds.
His musical faculty was purely Initiative.
He could initiate any sound and play on
the piano from memory any piece of mU-
sic, no matter how intricate, note for note,
after hearing it but once. The same apt
itude was displayed by Helat, called La
Folie Lucide, also congenitally blind. who
excited so much attention that Liszt and
Meyerbeer visited her; and by other idiots
described in treatises on idiocy:
All classes of idiots are peculiarly SuScep-
tible to rhythmical sounds, and hence Il
musical aptitude in them is not so aston
ishing as the arithmetical. This arithme-
teal faculty, due to phenomenal mem-
ory and to imitation, has been displayed
chiefly in an astonishing power of reckon
ing or of calculation only. Seven examples
of idiots possessing it are adduced. There
was, for instance, Zerah Colburn, born in
Vermont in 1901 who at the age of was
a mathematical prodigy, though he was
without even ordinary intelligence in other
directions, and was a degenerate, with SUI
pernumerary digits on both hands and feet.
Tom Fuller, a Virginia lightning calcu-
lator'' OF the last century. was an illiterate
native African of prodigious power of cal
culation. Asked how many seconds in a
year and half he responded in two min
utes 4I,30i, 900; how many seconds man
had lived who was 20 years II days and u
hours old. he answered in a minutes and Il
half, 2,2l0, ,5OO.SOO. Dose. an otherwise eN-
tremely dul-witted German, was "a math-
ematical genius who, for example, 'mul-
tiplied correctly in fifty-four seconds 19,532,-
S53 by 93,T5S. 40" Examples of eXtraordi-
nary aptitude for mathematics in men of
intellectual eminence are Ampere. Gauss
Archbishop Whately, George Bidder. SAT-
ford and Wallis; but as contrasted with
them, that of the idiots is of a low order,
consisting entirely of excessive powers in
simple calculation This aptitude lis OBJ
served only in the congenital variety of
idiots"
As a. striking example of remarkable
artistice faculty in an idiot, DIR. Peterson
refers to the case of Godfried Mind. an
imbecile who died in 1914 and many of the
examples of whose paintings are in Euro
pcan art galleries. He achieved distinction
in the drawing and painting of cats, and
became known as the cats Raphael. Apti-
memory have been displayed by idiots, for
instance. by an imbecile who could give
Immediately the days of birth and death
and the principal events in the life of any
celebrated parsonage mentioned to him.
In all the cases of special aptitudes in