
Perfect Turmoil
The rise, fall, and redemption of the doctor behind America’s first public school for mentally disabled people
From the moment he became superintendent of the nation’s oldest public school for intellectually and developmentally disabled children in 1887 until his death in 1924, Dr. Walter E. Fernald led a wholesale transformation of our understanding of disabilities in ways that continue to influen...
The rise, fall, and redemption of the doctor behind America’s first public school for mentally disabled people
From the moment he became superintendent of the nation’s oldest public school for intellectually and developmentally disabled children in 1887 until his death in 1924, Dr. Walter E. Fernald led a wholesale transformation of our understanding of disabilities in ways that continue to influen...