Edouard Seguin

Edouard Seguin (January 20, 1812 - 1880) was a French physician who worked with mentally handicapped children in France and the United States. He was a student of French physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, the educator of Victor, also known as the "The Wild Child of Aveyron". Seguin pioneered modern educational methods for teaching the severely retarded.

Biography

Early life

Edouard Seguin was born in Clamecy, France, into a family of prominent physicians. He was educated at the Collège d'Auxerre and at the Lycée St. Louis in Paris before embarking to the studies of medicine and surgery. He studied under Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, father of otorhinolaryngology and precursor of special education.

Influences on Seguin’s work

It was Jean Itard, who persuaded Seguin to dedicate himself to study the causes, as well as the training of the mentally retarded. At the time, mentally retarded were regarded as non-treatable and were held isolated from the rest of the society. Jean Itard thought otherwise. He himself was involved with teaching a feral child, known as "The Wild Boy of Aveyron", who grew up in the woods of the southern France. Itard believed that the boy’s mental deficiency was entirely due to a lack of human interaction, so he dedicated several years of his life in trying to teach him to communicate. Itard’s work inspired Seguin to start to teach mentally retarded children on his own.

Seguin was additionally influenced by Count de Saint-Simon, a utopian socialist who believed that all people deserved freedom and happiness, and that with the development of science and technology, whole society would reach the stage when all its citizens would be treated equally. Seguin held that educating mentally challenged was a step closer to creating a more perfect society.

Training of mentally challenged

By 1837, Seguin began to treat first mentally challenged child, at the Salpetriere asylum in Paris. His class gradually grew bigger, and in 1839, he created the first school dedicated to the education of the mentally challenged.

While working in the Salpetriere asylum, Seguin noticed certain benefits of a physiological method in treating mental retardation. This led him to believe that mental deficiency was caused not by abnormal brains, but by a weakness of the nervous system and that it could be cured through motor and sensory training. He focused on exercises that developed muscles and senses, through which, Seguin believed, his pupils would strengthen their bodies and gradually gain control over their central nervous systems. He held that, regardless of their level of intellectual handicap, people would be able to learn to control their bodies through the power of will. Seguin called his method a “physiological education”, and its main goal was to help the patients function as well as possible in society.

In 1844, the commission from the Paris Academy of Science recognized Seguin's methods, praising them for their effectiveness. The commission made a report, stating at the end that Seguin finally solved the problem of "idiot education."

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 the United States

After the revolution of 1848, Seguin moved to the United States where he continued his work by establishing other schools for the mentally handicapped. He visited numerous schools that have been modeled on his own, advising them on his method. He finally settled down in Portsmouth, Ohio.

In 1860, he moved to Mount Vernon, New York, and has received the M. D. degree from the medical department of the University of the City of New York in 1861. At the same time he set up his own medical practice at Mt. Vernon.

In 1863 Seguin moved to New York City and started to work with retarded children at Randall's Island School for Mental Defectives. 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.

Later career

Seguin also did significant research in the area of animal heat and thermometry. He published three works on this topic 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 was the standard temperature of health. The thermometer was largely used in clinical practice.

In 1873 he served as a commissioner from the United States to the World's Fair in Vienna.

Edouard Seguin died in New York City, on October 28, 1880.

Legacy

Through his work Seguin proved that mentally challenged people, who were once labeled as "idiots" and thought as “un-trainable”, could be taught and trained. His schools in France and United States have inspired dozens of others in Britain and North America to set up their own schools. Among the educators who were influenced by his teaching methods was Maria Montessori, one of the greatest educators of modern time. Many of physical exercises that Sequin established as part of his program are still used in modern special education.

A symptom known as "Seguin's signal" is named after him. These are involuntary muscle contractions prior to an epileptic attack.

Publications

• Seguin, Edward. 1847. Jacob-Rodrigues Pereire ... notice sur sa vie et ses travaux et analyse raisonnée de sa méthode. Paris: J.-B. Baillère, Libraire de l'Académie Royale de Médecine.
• Seguin, Edward. 1870. New facts and remarks concerning idiocy, being a lecture delivered before the New York medical journal association, October 15, 1869. New York: W. Wood & co.
• Seguin, Edward. 1873. Thermométres physiologiques et thermométrie mathématique leur application a la médicine, a la chirurgie, a l éducation. Paris: Bailliére.
• Seguin, Edward. 1873. Family thermometry; a manual of thermonetry, for mothers, nurses, hospitalers, etc., and all who have charge of the sick and of the young. New York: G.P. Putman & Sons.
• Seguin, Edward. 1876. Medical thermometry and human temperature. New York: William Wood & Co.
• Seguin, Edward. 1971 (original published in 1866). Idiocy and its treatment by the physiological method. New York: A.M. Kelley. ISBN 0678007314
• Seguin, Edward. 1997 (original published in 1846). Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots. Paris: Association pour l'étude de l'histoire de la sécurité sociale. ISBN 2905882395
• Seguin, Edward. 1999 (original published in 1875). Report on education 1875: a facsimile reproduction. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints. ISBN 0820112828

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Fynne, Robert J. 1924. Montessori and her inspirers. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
• Houston, C.S. 1987. Edouard Seguin and the social power of thermometry. The New England Journal of Medicine. 317(2), 120.
• Kraft, Ivor. 1961. Edouard Seguin and 19th century moral treatment of idiots. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 35, 393-418.
• Seguin, Edouard. In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved August 14, 2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online, <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9066610>
• Shuttleworth, George E. 1881. In memory of Edouard Seguin ... A review of addresses at his funeral. Lancaster: T. Bell & co.
• Talbot, Mabel E. 1964. Edouard Seguin: A study of an educational approach to the treatment of mentally defective children. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.
• Talbot, Mabel E. 1967. Edouard Seguin. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 72(2), 184-9.

External links

• Edouard Seguin – Biography in Encyclopedia Britannica
• Edouard Seguin – Biography in Virtual American Biographies
• Maria Montessori and her Modern Approach – The influence of Seguin's work on Maria Montessori
• Museum of Disability History – Some famous figures in the history of research on disability
• Treatise on Treatment of the Mentally Handicapped - Excerpts from Seguin's 1866 work
• A Typical Case of One of The Forms of Sensorial Idiocy - Seguin's work from 1877, published in The British Medical Journal, Vol. II

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