Educare gli anormali nella Milano di inizio Novecento: l’esperienza dell’Istituto San Vincenzo

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the Milanese context of the early twentieth century, the San Vicenzo Institute for abnormal childhood education arose on the initiative of don Luigi Casanova, one of the first Italian experiences to offer a specific and integral education to children with mental deficits. Pride of place in the Catholic panorama of the beginning of the century, they found a beneficial union of charitable features and pedagogical lines, scientific methodologies and charitable purposes. The article reconstructs the peculiar characteristics of this institution, whose history contributes to delineate some elements of Italian special education, which during the last century experienced a decisive revolution.