Il giovane selvatico

In 1798, in Auvergne, three hunters captured a young boy who had grown up alone in the woods; some time later, the boy was taken to Paris. The dwellers of the capital crowded around curiously upon his arrival, expecting to see Rousseau’s “noble savage”; instead, they saw a “creature” seized with convulsions, who bit and scratched anyone who approached him and slept in his own excrements. He would have ended up in the Bicêtre Hospital if a young doctor, Jean Itard, had not been granted the opportunity to try to educate him. In 1801 and in 1807, Itard wrote two essays – collected in the present volume – on his attempt.