Edouard Seguin

Edouard Seguin (1812-1880) was a physician who worked with mentally handicapped children in France and the United States. He was a student of French physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who was the educator of Victor of Aveyron, also known as the "The Wild Child".

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It was Jean Itard, who persuaded Seguin to dedicate himself to study the causes, as well as the training of the mentally retarded. In 1839, in France he created the first school dedicated to the education of the mentally handicapped. In 1846 he published "The Moral Treatment, Hygiene, and Education of Idiots and Other Backward Children". It is the earliest known treatise dealing with the special needs of children with mental disabilities.

In 1849, Seguin moved to the United States where he continued his work by establishing other schools for the mentally handicapped. In 1866, he published "Idiocy: and its Treatment by the Physiological Method"; which described the methods he used at the "Seguin Physiological School" in New York City. These programs stressed the importance of developing self-reliance and independence in the mentally disabled by giving them a combination of physical and intellectual tasks.

Eduoard Seguin became the first president of the "Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons", which would later be known as the American Association on Mental Retardation. His work with the mentally handicapped was a major inspiration to Italian educator Maria Montessori.

A symptom known as "Seguin's signal" is named after him. These are involuntary muscle contractions prior to an epileptic attack. Seguin published three works concerning thermometry during the 1870s; Thermometres physiologiques (Paris, 1873); Tableaux de thermometrie mathematique (1873); and Medical Thermometry and Human Temperature (New York, 1876). He also devised a special "physiological thermometer" in which zero is the standard temperature of health.

Further Reading:

• Excerpts of Seguin's 1866 Treatise on Treatment of the Mentally Handicapped

External References:

• Museum of Disability