Isaac Newton Kerlin

Isaac Newton Kerlin (born May 27, 1834, Burlington, New Jersey, U.S.—died October 25, 1893, Elwyn, Pennsylvania) was an American physician and administrator who was a strong proponent of institutionalizing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Kerlin graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1856. In 1858 he became the assistant superintendent at Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children (later known as the Elwyn Institute), located outside Philadelphia. He became its superintendent in 1863 and remained in the position for the following three decades, until his death. As superintendent, Kerlin developed new treatments and advocated for the wider establishment of specialized institutions to prevent developmentally disabled individuals from being held in prisons and insane asylums.

In 1876 Kerlin invited five other superintendents and the psychiatrist and 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 Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities). Kerlin would serve as the secretary-treasurer of that organization for the next 16 years, publishing and disseminating the proceedings of the group’s annual meetings. After the deaths of Samuel Gridley Howe in 1876 and Séguin in 1880, Kerlin arguably became the most-prominent national expert in the treatment and institutionalization of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.