Edward Seguin (1812-1881)

Edward Seguin was born in Clamency, France and moved to Paris for schooling. In 1837, he met Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who became his mentor.

Seguin worked under Jeanne-Etienne Esquirol, the Chief Physician of the Salpietre mental health hospital. He published with Esquirol and was given direction over a larger group of patients at the Bicêtre, under Félix Voison. Despite promising beginnings, Seguin ran into trouble with the officials there and was discharged in 1834 in disgrace with the French medical establishment.

He emigrated to the United States in 1850 and took a job at Samuel Gridley Howe’s School in Boston, but soon left to join Dr. Wilbur at what would become the Syracuse State School. He served at the Elwyn State School as educational director.

Seguin is most well known in America for introducing the physiological method. This stemmed from the belief that idiocy was caused by a degeneration of the central nervous system. Strengthening the nervous system, he believed, would improve the person’s abilities of control. He felt that through the use of physical exercises and sensory development, the cognitive abilities of the developmentally disabled could be increased.

Seguin believed that those with mental retardation could be trained, and learn to do things. He spent much of his time focusing on vocational training and self-care skills. This was a view that opposed the prevailing view of the time that idiocy could not be cured or sufferers improved.

"Idiocy is a specific infirmity of the cranio-spinal axis, produced by deficiency of nutrition in utero and neo-nati. It incapacitates mostly the functions which give rise to the reflex, instinctive, and conscious phenomena of life; consequently, the idiot moves, feels, understands, wills, but imperfectly; does nothing, thinks of nothing, cares for nothing (extreme cases), he is legally irresponsible; isolated, without associations; a soul shut up in imperfect organs, an innocent."

- Edward Seguin, France/United States, 1866 (Simpson, 1997)

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