A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled

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 influence our views today. How did the man who designed the first special education class in America, shaped the laws of entire nations, and developed innovative medical treatments for the disabled slip from idealism into the throes of eugenics before emerging as an opponent of mass institutionalization? Based on a decade of research, A Perfect Turmoil is the story of a doctor, educator, and policymaker who was unafraid to reverse course when convinced by the evidence, even if it meant going up against some of the most powerful forces of his time.

In this landmark work, Alex Green has drawn upon extensive, unexamined archives to unearth the hidden story of one of America’s largely forgotten, but most complex, conflicted, and significant figures.

Alex Green teaches political communications at Harvard Kennedy School and is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and a visiting scholar at Brandeis University Lurie Institute for Disability Policy. He has piloted a nationally recognized disability history curriculum for high school students, developed and taught the first graduate disability policy course offered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Policy, and is the author of legislation to create a first-of-its-kind, disability-led human rights commission to investigate the history of state institutions for disabled people in Massachusetts. He lives outside of Boston. A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled is his first book.