Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron [Other book format]

"Just before dawn on January 9, 1800, a mysterious creature emerged from a forest in southern France. Although he was human in form and walked upright, his habits were those of a young male animal. He was wearing only a tattered shirt, but did not seem troubled by the cold. Showing no modesty about his nakedness, he ate greedily, seizing roasted potatoes from a hot fire. He seemed to have no language skills, only grunting occasionally. A cause celebre developed over the question of what should be done with this puzzling wild boy. People Could he learn to speak? Or be taught to eat with a knife and fork? In THE FORBIDDEN EXPERIMENT, the award-winning cultural historian Roger Shattuck offers a captivating account of this fascinating episode in intellectualhistory. He examines the relationships that developed among the boy, soon named Victor; Madame Guerin, the woman who fed and washed him; and Itard, the tutor who defiled his colleagues who believed the boy was hopelessly retarded. Shattuck helps modern readers form many of the questions that still haunt parents, special education teachers, guidance counselors, and all students of human behavior to this How do children acquire language? How do deaf and mute children learn? Can children who have been neglected or abused ever learn to trust the world? Like a true-life tale of adventure rolled into a detective story, Roger Shattuck's riveting account of the Wild Boy of Aveyron is an unforgettable telling of one of history's greatest mystery stories"-- Provided by publisher.

The true story of the nineteenth century’s so-called “Wild Boy of Aveyron”—an abandoned French child who lived for years alone in the wilderness before being brought under the care of an innovative young physician.

“Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France.” So begins Roger Shattuck’s book about the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron—a child abandoned by his caretakers and captured, years later, while scavenging food from a garden. Unable to speak, he was sent to the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris, declared a hopeless case, and left to languish.
One day, however, Jean Itard, a young medical student from the provinces, took notice of the boy. Itard began to spend time with him, and soon the two found ways to interact. With games and toys Itard engaged the boy's senses and imagination, developing methods of education (some of which went on to form a basis for special education and the Montessory method) that brought him out further. For a while Victor—as Itard named him—made progress, but soon it stalled. Isolated behind institutional walls, the boy lived out the rest of his life a stone's throw from the Luxembourg Gardens.
The Forbidden Experiment tells the story of a tragic young man and the extraordinary doctor who tried, however imperfectly, to help him. It is a story of compassion, like the case studies of Oliver Sacks—a figure whom Itard foreshadows. It is also a story that leads Shattuck to ask deep questions about the human animal: What is language, how do we acquire it, and what do we become if we are deprived of it?