I was in high school when I first heard about feral children. What I actually heard was a story about The Forbidden Experiment. It went like this...

In 1211 the 16 year old King of Sicily (who became the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II officially in 1220) ran an experiment. He was a very modern man.


(Freddie was married at 14 years of age and his wife quickly gave birth to a son. So he was very much of an adult at 16 years of age.)

He could read and write seven languages. He spoke 2 additional languages. And he was a believer. He believed in science providing answers. And he really wanted to leave his mark on the world.

Besides his great tolerance

.............

he had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply did not believe things that could not be explained by reason.

.............

Many of his laws continue to affect life down to the present day, such as the prohibition on physicians acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow at the charlatanism under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies and also at the same time in order to sell a useless, even dangerous "cure".

From: The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II

So back to the scientific experiment.... Freddie boy wanted to know what language children would learn if they didn't hear any language. He was trying to figure if language was nature (born to all of us) or nurture (something we all learn).

So he gathered some new born children and hire a couple of caretakers to fed them. Did he pay the parents for the children or just take them? Who knows.

No one could talk to the babies. And the caretakers were instructed to limit the amount of time they interacted/held the babies.

Results: All the babies died.

There is a child mortality estimate of 30% for the middle ages. So some of the children should have survived.

Touch is very important to babies. Maybe the stress of the situation (many children with few caretakers) weakened the babies’ immune systems and made them vulnerable to illness. And/or maybe the caretakers didn't keep the children's environment clean and provide food in a timely manner.

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