Disability Culture Timeline

A brief history

The purpose of this website is to give a brief, but interesting, overview of the emergence and evolvement of the disabled culture. Disability culture has existed since the first recorded notations of disability in 3500 BC. Yes, since then and probably before that. Humans were not created as perfect beings. 

To understand disability culture, one must understand what determines a disability. Just what is disability, and who determines this label? Ah, there's the rub. The dispute of what constitutes a disability is the crux of the culture. Is it someone who needs glasses? Or should it be more severe, such as a missing eye? Both need assistance to have the sense of sight work to the fullest potential for the individual, but should the person with glasses be considered disabled? 

This website will not go into such detail, but moreover give the generally accepted description of disability, and how this description has changed over time.

Webster's Online Dictionary states:

Disability: noun: Date: 1580
1 a : the condition of being disabled b : inability to pursue an occupation because of physical or mental impairment
2 : lack of legal qualification to do something
3 : a disqualification, restriction, or disadvantage

Synonyms DISADVANTAGE, detriment, drawback, handicap

Disabled: transitional verb: Date: 15th century
1 : to deprive of legal right, qualification, or capacity
2 : to make incapable or ineffective; especially : to deprive of physical, moral, or intellectual strength
synonym see WEAKEN

With such depressing descriptions of a human condition, one can easily see why the word disability can bring images of physical and emotional devastation. Self-determination is truly the backbone of all humans, and the disabled are no exception. Disability knows no boundaries. Anyone can, and will be, disabled in their lifetime. Whether its a permanent disability or a temporary one, anyone who becomes disabled for any length of time is exposed and lives the culture of disability. Disability has always been, and will likely be, a part of the human condition.

Let's begin at the beginning.

In 3500 B.C., the Rig-Veda, an ancient sacred poem of India is said to be the first written record of a prosthesis.

In 1550 BC, an obscure document called the Therapeutic Papyrus of Thebes marks the first recorded reference to mental retardation.

Disability, as studied in anthropology, has been on the "specimen" level, dissecting the abnormalities of the human body and mind on scientific levels, ignoring the social evolution of the disabled and their place in society. Living conditions for persons with disabilities were brutal for most of disabled history. Mutilation, public humiliation and usually a horrendous death were the normal outcomes of disabled life.

Hippocrates (460-377 BC)

Early Greeks and Romans valued physical perfection, and any marks of deformity or racial differences branded  a person as an inferior being. Hippocrates (460-377 BC) believed that health involved a balance of the four "humours" or basic body substances: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.  He held the belief that illness had a physical and a rational explanation. He rejected the views of his time that considered illness to be caused by superstitions and by possession of evil spirits and disfavor of the gods. Hippocrates held the belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. He accurately described disease symptoms and was the first physician to accurately describe the symptoms of pneumonia, as well as epilepsy in children. He believed in the natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air and cleanliness. He noted that there were individual differences in the severity of disease symptoms and that some individuals were better able to cope with their disease and illness than others. He was also the first physician that held the belief that thoughts, ideas, and feelings come from the brain and not the heart as others of his time believed. Later on physicians in the Dark Ages believed that mental retardation and illness were an imbalance of black bile.

In 355-280 BC, the physician Herophilus established one of the earliest medical schools in Alexandria. He finds connections between brain defects and mental disability. This discovery didn't change the way a disabled person was regarded, but it was the first of thousands of studies linking the formation of the brain to mental illness.¹

On the flipside, those with "hidden" disabilities, such as epilepsy, rose to power with the stereotype of "The Holy Innocents". The belief was these people were special children of the Gods with special purposes. They were seen as incapable of committing evil, and sometimes were viewed as saints. Caesar Augustus and Alexander the Great all suffered from epilepsy. It was believed their illness elevated them above mere mortals, and their success in wars were due to the visions they experienced during their seizures.

Unfortunately, very few handicapped people had it so good. Most that survived infancy became beggars, objects of scorn and charity.The phrase "alms for the poor" were usually spoken by a blind beggar or invalid squatting on a street corner. The word "exposure" means to leave one out in the weather to die. In ancient Greece, many disabled children were dumped in the woods to suffer the ultimate death for being born deformed. The tale of Oedipus Rex begins with Oedipus having his ankles pierced with spears of wood and left in the forest to die. Oedipus was not born deformed, but the result of his mother's act left him deformed; the name Oedipus means "swollen feet". Even though Oedipus ends up killing his father and sleeping with his mother, he suffers such torments in the pursuit of truth at any cost. Subsequently, Oedipus is the patron saint of philosophers, scientists, poets and artists - of all truth-seekers.

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© 2003 Barbara J. McKee