Kerlin, Isaac Newton (1834–1893)

American institution administrator

From 1863 until the time of his death in 1893, Isaac Newton Kerlin was the superintendent of the Pennsylvania Training School for Feebleminded Children (better known as the Elwyn Institute), located outside of Philadelphia. Kerlin himself became one of the leaders of the first generation of superintendents for the so-called idiot asylums that were emerging in post–Civil War America. In 1876, in an effort to gain professional status equal to that of the more established leaders of the older insane asylums, Kerlin invited five other fellow superintendents and the prominent educator Edouard Séguin to join him in Philadelphia to found the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons (now known as the American Association on Mental Retardation). Kerlin would serve as the secretary-treasurer of this organization for the next 16 years, actively publishing and disseminating the proceedings of the group's annual meetings. With the deaths of Samuel Howe in 1876 and Edouard Séguin in 1880, Kerlin arguably became the most prominent national expert in the treatment and institutionalization of the feebleminded population and remained so until his death in 1893.

Throughout his career, Kerlin was an aggressive proponent of institutionalization of individuals with intellectual disabilities. He was earlier than many of his colleagues in abandoning the educational optimism that with skilled treatment most feebleminded children could be cured or significantly improved. Even his descriptions of “moral idiocy” (or, in later terms, “moral imbecility” or “juvenile insanity”) endorsed the notion of hereditary incurability and the need for custodial institutionalization for those with normal intelligence but a defective “moral sense.”