_GESTURES IN MENTAL DISORDER._

The insane understand and obey gestures when they have no knowledge
whatever of words. It is also found that semi-idiotic children who
cannot be taught more than the merest rudiments of speech, can receive
a considerable amount of information through signs, and can express
themselves by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use appropriate
gestures after their words have become uncontrollable. It is further
noticeable in them that mere ejaculations, or sounds which are only
the result of a state of feeling, instead of a desire to express
thought, are generally articulated with accuracy. Patients who have
been in the habit of swearing preserve their fluency in that division
of their vocabulary.



_UNINSTRUCTED DEAF-MUTES._

The signs made by congenital and uninstructed deaf-mutes to be now
considered are either strictly natural signs, invented by themselves,
or those of a colloquial character used by such mutes where
associated. The accidental or merely suggestive signs peculiar to
families, one member of which happens to be a mute, are too much
affected by the other members of the family to be of certain
value. Those, again, which are taught in institutions have become
conventional and designedly adapted to translation into oral speech,
although founded by the abbé de l'Épée, followed by the abbé Sicard,
in the natural signs first above mentioned.