ITARD, JEAN-MARC-GASPARD

born 1775, Oraison, France died July 5, 1838, Paris French physician noted for his work with deaf-mutes, especially the wild boy of Aveyron. Itard was originally marked for the banking profession, but, when the French Revolution intervened, he became a military surgeon, initially attached to Napoleon's famous surgeon Baron Larrey. After meeting the Abb Sicard, the director of a school for deaf-mutes in Paris, Itard was put to work studying the functions and malfunctions of hearing. From about 1800 he devoted a great deal of his time and private fortune to the education of deaf-mutes. Itard was one of the first to attempt the instruction of mentally retarded children on a scientific basis. In Rapports sur le sauvage de l'Aveyron (1807; Reports on the Savage of Aveyron), he explained the methods that he used (180105) in trying to train and educate an 11-year-old boy who had been found running naked and wild in a forest. He also wrote Mutisme produit par lsion des facults intellectuelles (1824; Mutism Produced by Lesion of the Intellectual Faculties) and Trait des maladies de l'oreille et de l'audition (1821, 1842; Treatise on the Maladies of the Ear and of Hearing). He was made a member of the Academy of Medicine in 1821.