Abstract

Little has been written about the history of mental retardation in colonial America. This is partly because there is a paucity of information about the condition in that period, and partly because the topic has not aroused the interest of scholars. This particular study focuses on mental retardation, or idiocy, its analogous condition, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although there is not much evidence of idiocy in the colony's written records, it is possible to construct an interpretation of the ways that colonists probably thought about the condition. The distinctive beliefs and practices of Puritanism in colonial Massachusetts influenced the colonists' conceptions of idiocy. Their laws and the records of the courts indicate that idiocy was experienced by certain individuals who were thought to be vulnerable, incompetent, and pitiable but worthy recipients of public relief. Ordinary colonists adopted images of idiocy as figures of speech to deprecate others, and Puritan ministers included metaphors of idiocy in their sermons to depict the contradictory situations of holy innocence and spiritual deprivation. Two Puritan intellectuals, Charles Morton and Cotton Mather, included idiocy in scientific treatises, although they offered no new interpretations. The ways Americans think about and behave toward persons with mental retardation in the twenty-first century can be traced to the multiple meanings of idiocy in colonial Massachusetts.

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