A pupil of Pinel, Itard pioneered in the attempt to educate a young “wild boy” who had lived since infancy entirely apart from human contact. In adapting the methods of teaching deaf-mutes to his extraordinary pupil, Itard created a new system of pedagogy which profoundly influenced modern educational methods. He was very optimistic in the above work issued nine months after he had started working with the boy. By his second account, Rapport sur les nouveaux développemens et I’état actuel du sauvage de I’Aveyron, Paris, 1807, Itard regretfully concluded that the boy was incapable of learning speech and that some of the effects of prolonged isolation are irreversible, especially when the isolation occurs during the crucial period of early childhood. English translation of first work as An historical account of the discovery and education of a savage man, or of the first developments physical and moral, of the young savage caught in the woods near Aveyron, in the year 1798. London, 1802.

Itard's accounts became the subject of a very sensitive 1970 film by François Truffault entitled l'Enfant sauvage. Filmed in Aveyron, France, and often using Itard's language for narration, the film captured the spirit of Itard's experience.

Digital facsimile of the 1801 work from BnF Gallica at this link. Both of Itard's works were reprinted with supplementary material as Rapports et mémoires sur les sauvage de l'Aveyron l'idiotie et la surdi-mutité part Itard avec une appréciation de ces rapports par Delasiauve. Préface par Bourneville. Éloge d'Itard par Bousquet. Paris: Aux Bureaux du Progrès Médical & Félix Alcan, 1894.