Paul Irvine

James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)

James McKeen Cattell was born on May 24, 1860, in Easton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lafayette College, of which his father was president. In 1880., he studied for two years in Germany, spent one year as a fellow at Johns Hopkins University, then studied under Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1886. During the next two years, he divided his time between teaching at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, and working at Sir Francis Galton’s laboratory in London. In 1888, Cattell was appointed to the world’s first professorship in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1891, he became professor of psychology at Columbia Univer-

J. Langdon Down (1826-1896)

J. (John) Langdon Down, an English physician, is best known for the disorder which bears his name, Down’s syndrome. Although there had been references earlier in the medical literature to individuals who may have belonged to the category, Down is credited with the discovery and description of this clinical entity. Down named the condition &dquo;mongolism,&dquo; a category that was part of a system he developed for classifying congenital mental retardation according to what he perceived as ethnic similarities-the Ethiopian variety, the Aztec variety, the Mongolian variety, and so on. Down’s ethnic classification was not widely accepted, but the category of mongolism endured. Down was an important figure both in the development of the scientific study of mental retardation and in the establishment of services for the mentally retarded. Based on extensive experience with mentally retarded people and their families, which included a number of years as medical superintendent of the Asylum for Idiots at Earlswood near Birmingham, England, he advocated special schooling for mentally retarded children, beginning at an early age. Down founded a private residential facility that served mentally retarded children and young adults from wealthy families. Located on 20 acres of land, the school provided a variety of training and recreational activities, in sharp contrast to the primarily custodial public facilities of the time. The program at Down’s school emphasized sensory training, the development of self-care skills, vocational preparation, and instruction in speech and language, along with physical training and other measures to promote good health. Down was greatly interested in the prevention of mental retardation. He advised expectant mothers regarding diet, including the temperate use of alcohol, and counseled parents in proper prenatal care and sound child-rearing practices. J. Langdon Down contributed in major ways to the development of appropriate medical care and educational services for mentally retarded children and provided the basis for the systematic classification of mental retardation and its etiology. Paul Irvine

Julia S. Molloy (1905-1983)

bound program of the Evanston, Illinois, public schools. During the next decade she served as a speech and language therapist at Cook County’s outpatient clinic for retarded children. As an outgrowth of her work there, she and a group of parents in 1952 formed the Orchard School, a private school for retarded children in Skokie, Illinois. Under Julia Molloy’s direction, the Orchard School became an internationally recognized model for the development of programs for retarded children. At the