It is now twenty-one years since this noble philanthropist, then just entering upon the duties of his profession, was first led by some incidents occurring during a tour in the Bernese Alps to investigate the condition of the cretin.  For three years he devoted himself to the study of the disease and the method of treating it.  Two years of this period were spent in the small village of Seruf, in the Canton Glarus, where he was successful in restoring several to the use of their limbs.  It was at the end of this period, that, with a moral courage and devotion of which history affords but few examples, Doctor Guggenbuehl resolved to dedicate his life to the elevation of the cretins from their degraded condition.  Consecrating his own property to the work, he asked assistance from the Canton Bern in the purchase of land for a hospital, and received a grant of six hundred francs ($120) for the work.  His investigations had satisfied him that an elevated and dry locality was desirable, and that it was only the young who could be benefited.  He accordingly purchased, in 1840, a tract of about forty acres of land, comprising a portion of the hill called the Abendberg, in the Canton Bern, above Interlachen.  The site of his Hospital buildings is about four thousand feet above the sea, and one or two hundred feet below the summit of the hill; it is well protected from the cold winds, and the soil is tolerably fertile.

There are few spots, even among the Alps, which can compare with the Abendberg in beauty and grandeur of scenery.  Doctor Guggenbuehl was led to select it as much for this reason as for its salubrity, in the belief, which his subsequent experience has fully justified, that the striking nobleness of the landscape would awaken, even in the torpid mind of the cretin, that sense of the beautiful in Nature which would materially aid in his intellectual culture.

On the southern slope of the Abendberg he erected his Hospital buildings, plain, wooden structures, without ornament, but comfortable, and well adapted to his purpose.  Here he gathered about thirty cretin children, mostly under ten years of age, and began his work.

To understand fully what was to be accomplished, in order to transform the young cretin into an active, healthy child, it is necessary that we should glance at his physical and mental condition, when placed under treatment.

Cretinism seems to be a combination of two diseases, the one physical, the other mental.  The physical disorder is akin to Rachitis, or rickets, while the mental is substantially idiocy.  The osseous structure, deficient in the phosphate of lime, is unable to sustain the weight of the body, and the cretin is thus incapacitated for active motion; the muscles are soft and wasted; the skin dingy, cold, and unhealthy; the appetite voracious; spasmodic and convulsed action frequent; and the digestion imperfect and greatly disordered.  The mind seems to exist only in a germinal state; observation, memory, thought, the power of combination, are all wanting.  The external senses are so torpid, that, for months perhaps, it is in vain to address either eye or ear; nor is the sense of touch much more active.  The cretin is insensible to pain or annoyance, and seems to have as little sensation as an oyster.