Jean Marc Gaspard Itard

Jean Marc Gaspard Itard (April 24 1774 - 1838) was a French physician born in Provence.

In 1825, Itard was credited with describing the first case of Tourette syndrome in Marquise de Dampierre, a woman of nobility.

In 1821, Itard published a major work on otology, describing the results of his medical research based on over 170 detailed cases. He is credited with the invention of the Eustachian catheter, which is sometimes known as "Itard's catheter". Numbness in the tympanic membrane during otosclerosis is referred to as the "Itard-Cholewa Symptom".

He was also an educator of deaf children, and tried his educational theories in the celebrated case of Victor of Aveyron. However, his efforts with Victor ended up with disappointing results.

Notes

Victor of Aveyron (also The Wild Boy of Aveyron) was a boy who apparently lived his entire childhood alone in the woods before being found wandering the woods near Saint Sernin sur Rance, France (near Toulouse) in 1797. He was captured, but soon escaped. He was then captured again and kept in the care of a local woman for about a week before he escaped once more.

However, on January 8, 1800, he emerged from the forests on his own, perhaps habituated to human kindness after his second experience. His age was unknown but citizens of the village estimated that he was about twelve years old. His lack of speech, as well as his food preferences and the numerous scars on his body, indicated that he had been in the wild for the majority of his life. This remarkable situation came about at the end of the Enlightenment, when many were debating what exactly distinguished man from animal. One of the prevailing opinions involved the ability to learn language; it was hoped that by studying the wild boy, they would learn the answer.

Shortly after Victor's discovery, a local abbot and biology professor, Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre, examined him. He removed the boy's clothing and led him outside into the snow, where, far from being upset, Victor began to frolic about in the nude. This indicated to some that human reaction to temperature is greatly a result of conditioning and experience.

Despite the fact that he could hear, Victor was taken to the National Institute of the Deaf for the purpose of study. He became a case study in the Enlightenment debate about the differences between humans and animals.

Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, a young medical student, took on the remarkable case as his own. Itard believed that two things separated humans from animals; empathy and language. He wanted to be the first person to fully civilize a wild child and attempted, primarily, to teach Victor to speak and show human emotion. Though initially successful — Victor showed significant progress, at least, in understanding language and reading simple words — he eventually slowed down to the point that Itard abandoned the experiment. The only words that Victor ever actually learned to speak were lait (milk) and Oh Dieu (oh God). Modern scholars now believe, partly by studying such feral children, that language acquisition must take place in a critical period of early childhood if it is to be successful. Though Itard failed at teaching Victor language he had a breakthrough emotionally.

Victor lived with Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and his housekeeper Madam Garhar. One night while setting the table, Victor noticed Madan Gerhar crying over the loss of her husband, he stopped what he was doing and consoled her, thus showing empathy. Itard took this as a major breakthrough in the case proving that the wild child was capable of human emotions.

The Wild Boy of Aveyron died in Paris in 1828.

Victor's life was dramatized in François Truffaut's 1970 film l'Enfant Sauvage (marketed in the UK as The Wild Boy and in the US as The Wild Child.

See also

• The Wild Child
• Feral child

Further reading

• Harlan Lane (1975). The Wild Boy of Aveyron. (Hardcover ISBN 0-674-95282-0 & Paperback ISBN 0-674-95300-2) Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• R. Shattuck (1980). The Forbidden Experiment: the Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. New York: Kodansha International.

External links

• Victor of Aveyron and other feral children at FeralChildren.com
• The 2 complete texts of Itard's Mémoir on Victor de l'Aveyron
• English translation of Itard's Mémoir on Victor de l'Aveyron

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Jean_Marc_Gaspard_Itard  ^history
• Victor_of_Aveyron  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Jean Marc Gaspard Itard"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.