Idiot genius - mystery and challenge to science
You've probably heard that the boundaries between genius and idiocy are subtle. Examples will be given here where there is simply no such boundary, where two extremes coexist in the same mind.
• Here is a picture of a wretched creature painted by Dr. A. Tredgold in the monumental work "Mental Disability". The name of the idiot is Fleury, and his whole life was spent in a psychiatric hospital in the French town of Armantier.
Fleury was born into a syphilitic family. he was born blind and feeble-minded. Parents soon abandoned him, and he ended up in the walls of a psychiatric hospital, where they noticed his unusual gift to solve arithmetic problems in his mind. Attempts to teach him the common truths did not lead to anything - Fleury learned almost nothing. Stooped, with a shuffling gait, with dim eyes, timid, he wandered all day long through the halls and grounds of the institution that had become his home.
But there were times when Fleury seemed to come out of his cocoon of idiocy and amaze scientists. On such days, experts gathered to check whether Fleury really had some unique abilities. The glory of the lightning counter followed him. And what? Indeed, scholars left these meetings as if wiser and no less discouraged. Fleury made calculations in his head with a speed and precision that defied explanation.
Fleury was once shown to a group of 12 leading European scientists and mathematicians to showcase his talents. They brought him into the room, and from fright he pressed against the wall and grinned stupidly, completely at a loss from the presence of so many unfamiliar faces. The person accompanying him read him a question that the scientists had prepared: you have 64 boxes, you put one grain in the first box, and twice as much in each subsequent one as in the previous one, how many grains will be in 64 boxes?
Fleury continued to giggle, hiding his face from the professors. The attendant asked him if he understood the question. Yes, I understand. Does he know the answer? Less than half a minute later, Fleury reported the correct number: 18 446 734 073 709 551 615.
Fleury, an idiot at the Armantier Clinic, did this kind of calculations for astronomers, architects, bank employees, tax collectors, and shipbuilders. And each time he gave an exact answer within a few seconds. Such calculations could not have been made by anyone until the advent of the era of electronic computing, decades after Fleury's death.
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• In some ways, Fleury's case resembles another one associated with the name of Tom Wiggins, a moron who was born from a slave girl on the Bethune estate in 1849, Alabama. Tom also was born blind, and because the blind child required increased care, the owners allowed the mother to keep him with her in the house. The house was huge, but Tom quickly learned to navigate in all the nooks and crannies, he could go where he wanted without the help of adults. Most of all, he loved to stand motionless under the main staircase and listen to the ticking of the clock belonging to the master's grandfather.
One day, on a lovely spring evening in 1855, when Tom was already six years old, guests from Montgomery came to the Bethune. Staged some performance. Bethune's mother-in-law and daughter-in-law performed two pieces on the piano. Both were excellent pianists with degrees from the Boston Conservatory.
When the guests had already gone to bed, the youngest Bethune was very surprised when she heard the sound of music coming from the hall. Did the mother-in-law decide to play the play again at such a late hour? However, young Bethune soon became convinced that her mother-in-law was fast asleep. Even more surprised, the daughter-in-law tiptoed down into the hall where the piano was.
In the moonlight streaming through the tall windows, she saw the blind Tom sitting at the instrument, his short fingers running across the piano keyboard. With pauses, but without a single mistake, he played one of the melodies performed by the ladies in the evening. Having walked the keys once, as if getting comfortable with the piano, he suddenly began to play quickly and with inspiration, exactly following the melody and tempo of the piece he had heard several hours before.
As they later found out, the child entered the hall through an open window, went to the piano, which he could only touch earlier, and repeated note by note until he had finished the entire melody played by experienced pianists.
Tom Wiggins, the blind idiot, became Blind Tom - the musical prodigy. The Bethune discovered that he had a wonderful gift for unmistakable imitation. No matter how complex the piece was, he immediately repeated it, making exactly the same mistakes as the pianists.
Rumors of his talent quickly spread throughout the country, and the Bethune began to stage performances, first in southern cities, and then in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati and others.
The 25-year-old Blind Tom toured the United States and European countries with concerts and amazed the audience with the fact that after listening to famous musicians, he immediately repeated what he heard with the finest shades of expression. Money flowed like a river. Young Mrs. Bethune prudently organized a special fund that allowed Tom to live a comfortable life.
How a blind, imbecile pianist first got acquainted with the piano keyboard is still a mystery. As a child, he was not allowed into the room where the piano was located, and afterwards he could not even remember if he had ever tried to play before that night.
Tom reached adulthood, weighed 250 pounds (113 kg) and, having the mind of a child, caused a lot of trouble for those around him, especially when traveling. At the meal, he scattered food like a capricious child, and after the performances, pleased with the applause, he stood on his head in the middle of the stage - a number not for a musician at all.
Blind Tom Wiggins, an idiot pianist, over time began to lose his incredible talent. In middle age, he once again turned into a snotty helpless moron (and died as such in 1907), living on the funds left over from a fantastic career.
• A boy was born to a wealthy family in Bern, Switzerland, in 1768, baptized by Gottfried Meind. The signs of mental retardation, noted in the child, soon developed into an obvious debility.
The family was wealthy, therefore everything was done for the intellectual development of the child, but everything was in vain. From birth until his death in 1814, at the age of 46, Gottfried Mind was a mentally retarded person, was not able to take care of himself, therefore he was accompanied by a bodyguard during walks.
Even as a child, Gottfried got acquainted with paints, crayons and slate boards. Soon he began to paint amazing pictures, some of them were done in watercolors. On fine days, the guard would take him somewhere to a wonderful corner of nature in his parents' estate, and for hours Gottfried sat there, happy, muttering something to himself, drawing everything that attracted the attention of this adult baby.
By the age of 30, this pitiful young man became famous throughout Europe for his paintings. He especially succeeded in painting with pets and children, to which he was closest in mental development. The painting "Cat with Kittens" was bought by the English king George IV, and for a long time it hung in the royal palace.
• Such a strange mixture of artist and idiot is seen in the modern double of Gottfried Meind in the person of Kyoshi Yamashita from Kobe, Japan. Like Gottfried Mind in his time, Yamashita needs protection and care like a child, but his paintings have gained universal fame. They were exhibited in the Kobe supermarket in 1957, and, according to experts, more than 100,000 people attended the trade fair.
Born in a slum, Kyoshi was so late in development that at the age of 12 it became necessary to place him in a mental hospital. On the line of parents and relatives, no one was an artist, Kyoshi himself did not manifest such a vocation in childhood, when suddenly he began to make appliqués: he tore up colored paper and glued the pieces to the canvas.
The talent continued to develop and grow stronger. The medical staff encouraged Kyoshi in every possible way. They began to bring him paints, but he began to eat them like candy, then he mastered brushes and began to paint with paints. He is now Japan's national favorite. The magazines argue among themselves for the right to place his drawings on the covers. Kyoshi Yamashita's book of color drawings, published in 1956, had an extraordinary success in Japan, while Kyoshi himself wandered the streets of the city at that time and begged for alms, unable to answer who he was and where he was from.
The Japanese government has assigned a bodyguard to Kyoshi, because an artist can go naked on the street and wander anywhere. However, sometimes he manages to sneak away, and then he staggers through the streets, dirty, ragged, living on alms, until they find him again.
Dr. Ryuzaburo Shikiba, a leading psychiatrist in Japan, said about Kyoshi Yamashita: "The idiot sage is a mystery and a challenge to science."
• The case of Jeffrey Janet, born in 1945 in Ilford, England, a blind cripple, once again emphasizes the ephemerality of the border between idiocy and genius. Doctors examined the crumpled baby and told the parents: "He will be feeble-minded and will last two years at most."
Jeffrey Janet not only "held out", but also became a wonderful guy with the talents of a real genius. At the age of 16, blind, unable to walk on his own, Jeffrey showed stunning abilities.
Doctors and journalists have witnessed Geoffrey recite all the British radio and television programs for a whole week, read to him once.
This idiot, "who could last two years at best," did complex mathematical calculations, giving the correct answers in seconds. Somehow, in a way that was only available to him, in a few seconds he could absolutely precisely find out on what date any day of transmission will fall in the future or in the past, even taking into account changes in the calendar.
His phenomenal talent simply ignored all the evidence of medical practice, once again claiming how little we know about the wonderland, which is the human brain.
F. Edwards
