Jean Marc Gaspard Itard

Jean Marc Gaspard Itard (24 April 1774, Oraison, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence – 5 July 1838, Paris) was a French medical doctor born in Provence. He is perhaps best known for his work with Victor of Aveyron.

Career

Itard, without a university education and working at a Marseilles bank, was forced to enter the army during the French Revolution, but presented himself as a physician at that time. After working as a health officer at a military hospital in Soliers, he was given the role of surgeon third class in the Army of Italy.

In 1796, he was appointed deputy surgeon at Val-de-Grâce (Hôpital d'instruction des armées du Val-de-Grâce) military hospital in Paris. Itard became a surgeon second class after taking courses in medicine under Phillipe Pinel, director of La Salpêtrière, and completing his thesis.

In 1799, physician at the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris. There, Itard was known to conduct torturous experiments on the deaf students in useless attempts to restore their hearing, including delivering electrical shocks, leech therapy, ear surgeries, and various types of internal and external medicinal applications.

Victor of Aveyron

Itard is known as an educator of the deaf, and tried his educational theories in the celebrated case of Victor of Aveyron, dramatised in the 1970 motion picture The Wild Child directed by François Truffaut, who also played Itard. However, he was disappointed with the progress he made with Victor.

René Laennec

In Paris, Itard was a student of physician René Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope (in 1816). Laennec was a few years younger but received a formal education at the University of Nantes and later became a lecturer and professor of medicine at the Collège de France. Itard described pneumothorax in 1803; Laennec would provide a fuller description of the condition in 1819.