Ақыл-естің кемістігі терминінің тарихы

Term once used in psychiatry to describe people with intellectual disabilities

The term feeble minded was used from the late 19th century in Europe, the United States and Australasia for disorders later referred to as illnesses or deficiencies of the mind. At the time, mental deficiency encompassed all degrees of educational and social deficiency. Within the concept of mental deficiency, researchers established a hierarchy, ranging from idiocy, at the most severe end of the scale; to imbecility, at the median point; and to feeble mindedness at the highest end of functioning. The last was conceived of as a form of high grade mental deficiency. The development of the ranking system of mental deficiency has been attributed to Sir Charles Trevelyan in 1876, and was associated with the rise of eugenics. The term and hierarchy had been used in that sense at least 10 years previously.

The earliest recorded use of the term in the English language dates from 1534, when it appears in one of the first English translations of the New Testament, the Tyndale Bible. A biblical commandment to "Comforte the feble mynded" is included in 1 Thessalonians. A London Times editorial of November 1834 describes the long serving former Prime Minister Lord Liverpool as a "feeble minded pedant of office".

Jack London published a short story, "Told in the Drooling Ward" (1914), which describes inmates at a California institution for the "feeble minded". He narrates the story from the point of view of a self styled "high grade feeb". The California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble minded Children, later the Sonoma Developmental Center, was located near the Jack London Ranch in Glen Ellen, California.