Text Transcriptions for Disability and the Imposter

Additional sources (Note, this document doesn’t include sources already cited that are freely accessible online that are just screenshots of a website):

16:47

“The negro has some peculiarities of constitution which are to be considered in treating of the proper means to be adopted for the preservation of his health… The preservation of the health of slaves is so plain a dictate of both interest and mercy that no planter is to be found in our country who does not aim to practice it as an object of primary importance. But some err from a want of knowledge and others from a want of care.” Dr. A. P. Merrill, “Plantation Hygiene,” Southern Agriculturist, 1853, 1, in Advice Among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old South, ed. James O. Breeden (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 181.”

Stephen C. Kenny - “A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy”? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South

17:20

Slavery Apologia on a website about a historic site:

https://www.monticello.org/sites/library/exhibits/lucymarks/medical/slavemedicine.html

18:00

“Persuading him to sit down on the chair with his legs extended out on the plank, he was secured tightly to it by means of straps made of surcingle webbing, which were passed successively over the thighs, knees and ankles. A strap around the abdomen, or rather pelvis, fastened behind, and another across the upper part of the thorax and points of the shoulders running downwards and backwards, held him so firmly that it was impossible for him to move his body forwards. Some bands made of the same substance, (surcingle webbing,) fitting accurately each wrist, (after the manner of “handcuffs,”) were buckled together with a strong leather strap, and this made fast to the band that passed over his knees, thus keeping his arms extended. His elbows were pinioned to his sides by a strap buckling behind. His legs, body and hands being now immovable, it only remained to fix his head, which was done by a band passing around it, and having attached, at the occiput, a strong leather strap. By laying hold of this and pulling directly downwards in the course of the spine, his head was so far controlled that an assistant could hold it in any position that I wanted. He appeared to be very much alarmed. Dr Baldwin counted his pulse, and found it varying from 122 to 128 beats in a minute.”

Stephen C. Kenny - “A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy”? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South

20:22

“From the battlefields of industry come the wounded, from the shambles of poverty come the deformed. What enemy has stricken them? How much of all this disease and misery is preventable?”

“This case of blindness, the physician says, resulted from ophthalmia. It was really caused by a dark, overcrowded room, by the indecent herding together of human beings in unsanitary tenements. We are told that another case of blindness resulted from the bursting of a wheel. The true case was an employer’s failure to safeguard his machine. Investigations show that there are many ingenious safeguards for machinery which are not adopted because their adoption would diminish the manufacturer’s profits. We Americans have been slow, dishonourably slow, in taking measures for the protection of our workmen.”

Helen Keller - Out of the Dark

21:25

“In Season Four, Episode Seven of The Crown, titled “The Heredity Principle,” creator Peter Morgan delves into a shocking Windsor family secret: the institutionalization and subsequent abandonment of two of the Queen’s first cousins, who, owing to their developmental disabilities, were shamefully hidden from the public and declared legally dead. When news of Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon broke in 1987, the royal family was engulfed in scandal, with the public outraged that the royals could treat their own flesh and blood with such callousness. Decades later, the Windsors would likely prefer to leave this shameful episode consigned to the ash heap of the past, but Morgan has dragged the skeletons out of the royal closet, excavating the Windsors’ shameful secret in a tender episode about family, faith, and mental illness.

The Queen’s cousins, Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, who each had a mental age of about three years old and never learned to talk in their lifetimes, were the third and fifth daughters of John Herbert Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother’s brother, and his wife, Fenella Bowes-Lyon. In 1941, when Nerissa was 15 years old and Katherine was 22, they were sent from the family home in Scotland to Royal Earlswood Hospital at Redhill, Surrey, where they would live out the rest of their days.”

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a34728377/queen-elizabeth-cousins-katherine-nerissa-bowes-lyon-asylum-true-story-the-crown-season-4/

21:44

“History Through Deaf Eyes – A Deaf Variety of the Human Race Alexander Graham Bell studied eugenics, the science of improving a species. When he published “Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race” in 1884, Bell issued a warning that deaf people were forming clubs, socializing with one another and, worst of all, marrying other deaf people. He concluded that the creation of a “deaf race” was underway. Other researchers soon countered Bell’s empirical evidence: although deafness can be inherited, only a small percentage of deaf people have deaf children. But the image of an insular, inbred, and proliferating deaf culture became a potent weapon for the oralist cause. Bell’s claims were widely repeated for years to come.

“Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriage of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy.” ~ Alexander Graham Bell”

https://gallaudet.edu/museum/exhibits/history-through-deaf-eyes/language-and-identity/a-deaf-variety-of-the-human-race/

24:21

“In 1921, James Biggs, a photographer from Bristol, England, became blind following an accident. Because he was feeling uncomfortable with the amount of traffic around his home, he painted his walking stick white to be more easily visible.

In 1930, Lion George A. Bonham, President of the Peoria Lions Club (Illinois) introduced the idea of using the white cane with a red band as a means of assisting the blind in independent mobility. The Peoria Lions approved the idea, white canes were made and distributed, and the Peoria City Council adopted an ordinance giving the bearers the right-of-way to cross the street. News of the club’s activity spread quickly to other Lions clubs throughout the United States, and their visually handicapped friends experimented with the white canes. Overwhelming acceptance of the white cane idea by the blind and sighted alike quickly gave cane users a unique method of identifying their special need for travel consideration among their sighted counterparts.

Also in 1931, in France, Guilly d’Herbemont recognized the danger to blind people in traffic and launched a national “white stick movement” for blind people. She donated 5,000 white canes to people in Paris.”

https://www.lionsclubs.org/en/resources-for-members/resource-center/white-cane-safety-day

35:10

“In the late 1700s, a French surgeon was forced at gunpoint to amputate a man’s healthy limb. After the surgery, the man sent the surgeon payment and a letter of gratitude claiming that the surgery made him feel better.

In 2000, the public found out that a Scottish surgeon named Robert Smith had performed leg amputations on two patients with seemingly normal limbs. When the CEO of Smith’s hospital figured out what Smith had done, Smith was forbidden to perform any more amputations. However, in the wake of these amputations, the debate concerning healthy amputation and other seemingly “unnecessary” and debilitating surgery gathered steam.

In 2015, a 30-year-old woman named Jewel Shuping claimed that she had her psychologist pour drain cleaner into her eyes so that she could realize her lifelong desire of being blind. To be fair, the veracity of Shuping’s claims is disputed; nevertheless, accounts of this assisted blinding once again highlight BIID.”

https://www.verywellmind.com/amputating-a-healthy-limb-1123848

36:43

“The amputation of his leg, which was drawn to the world’s attention on Monday, has brought new-found happiness to Mr Wright.

“By taking that leg away, that surgeon has made me complete,” he said.

“Of course I am not a different person now, but I might as well be. I have happiness and contentment and life is much more settled, so much easier.”

The operation brought to an end 30 years of desperation for Mr Wright, during which he admits he contemplated suicide, such was the unhappiness caused by his leg.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/632856.stm

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