To get Emma admitted into the school, she was provided with a cover story: She didn’t get along with other children in her regular school. That somehow raised the worry that she was feebleminded. The definition of feebleminded was sprawlingly vague in the late 1800s. People brought children to the Vineland Training School because they suffered epileptic convulsions. Others suffered from cretinism, a combination of dwarfism and intellectual disability. Others had a condition that would later be called Down syndrome. Emma belonged to a class of students who had no obvious symptoms but were still
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