Note 4 — DEFINITION OF IDIOCY.

This term is applied by the Greek writers to a person unpractised or unskilled in anything—one who has no professional knowledge, whether of politics or any other subject, and it seems to have corresponded with our word layman; thus, Thucydides, in describing the plague that broke out at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, in speaking of a physician and a layman, uses the phrase ιατρος καἱ ἱσιωτης; Plato also uses the word in the same sense (Legg. 933 D), and the same author, in contrasting a poet with a prose-writer, uses the phrase, "εν μἑτρω ὡς ποιητης, ἡ ἁυευ μἑτρου ὡς ισιωτης" (Phaedr. 258 D). I doubt very much the appropriateness of the word idiot as applied to these unfortunate creatures, and I think the American term of Feeble-minded more correctly represents their condition.