CRETINISM, from cretin (French), an idiot of the Alps, and this again probably from chretien, a Christian, one who, from his state of fatuity, could not sin, and was viewed with some degree of religious respect. The name of C. is now applied in a more general sense to idiocy, or defective mental development depending upon local causes, and associated with bodily deformity or arrested growth. C. is very often found in connection with goitre (q.v.), in the lower Alpine valleys, not only of Switzerland and Italy, but of the Pyrenees, Syria, India, and China. In Europe, it is rarely met with at a higher eleva tion than 3,000 ft., and haunts chiefly the valleys surrounded by high and steep walls of rock, which exclude the light, and limit the free circulation of air. Cretins are always pitiable, and frequently repulsive objects; they are generally dirty, shameless, and obscene; their appetite is commonly voracious; the mouth is large and open, the tongue often protruded, the eyes small, the nose flat and broad, the skull narrow and small in all its dimensions, the forehead retreating, the complexion cadaverous; in addi tion to which, the whole body is dwarfish, the hands and feet large, the limbs often rickety, the belly protuberant. The cause of C. is still imperfectly understood; the
recent researches of Virchow tend to the conclusion that it is a physical degeneration, dependent on the reception of an undue amount of calcareous matter into the system; and this agrees with the general result of numerous observations previously made, as to the prevalence of goitre and C. in places where calcareous waters are alone accessible to the inhabitants. See GOITRE. Many attempts have been recently made to improve the condition of the cretin in childhood, by removing him from the locality of his birth, and by careful training; the institution founded by Dr. Gug,genbillil on the Abendberg (q.v.), near Interlaken in Switzerland, having been the prototype of many others on the continent, and of some in England and Scotland, for the education of idiots.