Background
He was born on January 20, 1812 at Clamecy, France, the son of T. O. Seguin of a family of distinguished physicians.
(FACSIMILE: Reproduction Idiocy : and its treatment by the...)
FACSIMILE: Reproduction Idiocy : and its treatment by the physiological method FACSIMILE Originally published by New York : William Wood & Co. in 1866. Book will be printed in black and white, with grayscale images. Book will be 6 inches wide by 9 inches tall and soft cover bound. Any foldouts will be scaled to page size. If the book is larger than 1000 pages, it will be printed and bound in two parts. Due to the age of the original titles, we cannot be held responsible for missing pages, faded, or cut off text. 476 pages.
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He was born on January 20, 1812 at Clamecy, France, the son of T. O. Seguin of a family of distinguished physicians.
Educated at the College of Auxerre and at the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris, he studied medicine and surgery in the medical schools of France and came especially under the influence of Jean Marc Itard. While he was interested in general medicine, he applied himself especially to the study of mental diseases and, at a very early day, to the study of idiots, for whom no scientific treatment had been devised.
In 1861 he received the degree of M. D. from the University of the City of New York (later New York University).
In 1839 he opened a school for idiots in France that met with the approval of authoritative medical bodies and academies, and was the forerunner of many similar institutions throughout the world. In 1846 he published his chief work, Traitement Moral, Hygiène, et Education des Idiots, which was endorsed by the French Academy.
Having developed very decided social and political views, he felt uneasy in the revolutionary atmosphere of 1848, and about 1850 he emigrated to the United States. He first lived for some years in Ohio, but he was interested in the work in psychiatry that was going on in a number of different places, among them Syracuse, Vernon, and New York, where he took an active part in organizing the school for defectives on Randall's Island.
In 1866 he published a second book, Idiocy and Its Treatment by the Physiological Method, in which he was aided by his son, Edward Constant Seguin. In his later years he became much interested in medical thermometry and wrote a number of articles that helped to popularize the use of the clinical thermometer. He died in 1880.
(FACSIMILE: Reproduction Idiocy : and its treatment by the...)
He insisted again and again that the idiot's brain was neither diseased nor abnormal but arrested in its growth. Seguin himself makes very liberal allusion to the kindergarten methods and acknowledges his indebtedness to all such early masters in his field as Horace Mann, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Hervey Backus Wilbur.
He was a man of many amiable qualities and of remarkable unselfishness. Possessed of a wide general culture, he enjoyed painting and poetry, and is said to have written very good verse.
In 1880 he was married for a second time to Elsie Mead, who for many years after his death conducted a school for the training of defective children.