Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1052

NAME SEGUIN 1030 SEGUIN sis, on tetanoid paraplegia, and, above all, his lectures and admirable series of papers on localization of brain-lesions did a great deal to stimulate the study and practice of neurology. His work on spastic paraplegia, his lectures and his series of papers preceded those of Erb and Charcot. To him is due what is known as the American, method of giving potassium iodide in enormous doses. Though a specialist, he had very wide sym- pathies in the profession and threw himself with great enthusiasm into literary ventures. Thus, in 1873, he joined with Brown-Sequard in the editorship of the Archives of Scientific and Practical Medicine and Surgery, a jour- nal which did not, however, survive a year. Between 1876-8 he edited a series of Amer- ican clinical lectures, but his most pretentious venture was the Archives of Medicine (1879), in which an attempt was made to supply the profession with a high-class jour- nal. But it was not a financial success and lapsed after the twelfth volume. From the shock of an awful domestic tragedy in 1884, Dr. Seguin never fully recov- ered. After staying abroad for two years he resumed practice in New York, but did not teach again. Many years before his death he lost one of his fingers, the result of a spindle-shaped growth. In 1896 a growth appeared in the abdomen and there were, later, signs of diffuse metastases. From a long and trying illness he was released on February 19, 1898. From an obituary in the Phila. Med. Jour., 1898, vol. i. Seguin, O. Edouard (1812-1880) This Frenchman, pioneer in the scientific treatment of the feeble-minded, came to the United States when thirty-six years old, after the revolution of 1848, during which he lost his position as director of the Bicetre idiot asylum at Paris, where for ten years he had pursued his investigations. He originated eleven similar institutions in this country and ultimately became a citizen of our largest city and took an M. D. degree in 1861 from the University of the City of New York. The son of T. O. Seguin he was born at Clamecy, Department of Nieve, France, Janu- ary 20, 1812. His education was at the col- leges of Auxerre and St. Louis, Paris. Imme- diately he began studies upon the physiological education and training of idiots, taking under his care a defective boy as early as 1837 and improving his condition, with the advice of his teachers Itard and Esquirol. The standard "Dictionaire de Medecine" published in that year had this to say as to the outlook in idiocy : "It is useless to attempt to combat idiotism. In order that the intel- lectual exercise might be established, it would be necessary to change the conformation of organs which are beyond the reach of all modification." Dr. Seguin thought he saw the gleam beyond the hopelessness. He defined idiocy as an "infirmity of the nervous system, which has for its effect the abstraction of the whole or part of the organs and the faculties of the child from the normal action of the will." In time his school for the feeble-minded became the prototype of seventy-five similar institutions in civilized countries. He began to write papers on his specialty in 1839 and in 1846 appeared his magnum ol>us, "Traite- ment Moral, Hygiene et Education des Idiots." This was followed by an article on the treat- ment of the deaf and dumb, in 1847. Seguin's work was crowned by the Academy and he received an autograph letter from Pope Pius IX. Psychologists of all nations visited his school and spread his teachings. Horace Mann brought his ideas to Massachusetts, thus leading to the founding of the state asylum and Sumner took them to New York. When Dr. Seguin came to the United States in 1848 he settled in Cleveland, Ohio, and practised medicine there and at Portsmouth, Ohio, for ten years, then after revisiting France he returned to settle in New York where he spent the rest of his life. A year after receiving his degree from the New York University he became a member of the American Medical Association. In New York he practised medicine and became interested in the study of animal heat and medical ther- mometry. His want of familiarity with the English language was a handicap ; this and his distaste for administrative detail led him to relinquish, after a short ser-ice, the super- intendency of a recently established Pennsyl- vania training school. In 1866 he published, with the assistance of his son. E. C. Sequin (q. v.), a book in Eng- lish, on "Idiocy and Its Treatment by the Physiological Method." His publications on medical thermometry from 1871 to 1876 popu- larized the use of the clinical thermometer. In the last decade of his life he was a fre- quent visitor to European medical congresses, where he figured more especially as an advo- cate of a uniform metric system and of "mathematical" thermometry in medicine. His last writings were monographs on the train- ing of the idiot's hand and the training of