From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency

From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency

Author: Anne Digby

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-09

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1134831994

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From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency is the first book devoted to the social history of people with learning disabilities in Britain. Approaches to learning disabilities have changed dramatically in recent years. The implementation of 'Care in the Community', the campaign for disabled rights and the debate over the education of children with special needs have combined to make this one of the most controversial areas in social policy today. The nine original research essays collected here cover the social history of learning disability from the Middle Ages through the establishment of the National Health Service. They will not only contribute to a neglected field of social and medical history but also illuminate and inform current debates. The information presented here will have a profound impact on how professionals in mental health, psychiatric nursing, social work and disabled rights understand learning disability and society's responses to it over the course of history.


From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency

From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency

Author: Anne Digby

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-09

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1134831986

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency is the first book devoted to the social history of people with learning disabilities in Britain. Approaches to learning disabilities have changed dramatically in recent years. The implementation of 'Care in the Community', the campaign for disabled rights and the debate over the education of children with special needs have combined to make this one of the most controversial areas in social policy today. The nine original research essays collected here cover the social history of learning disability from the Middle Ages through the establishment of the National Health Service. They will not only contribute to a neglected field of social and medical history but also illuminate and inform current debates. The information presented here will have a profound impact on how professionals in mental health, psychiatric nursing, social work and disabled rights understand learning disability and society's responses to it over the course of history.


Fools and Idiots?

Fools and Idiots?

Author: Irina Metzler

Publisher:

Published: 2018-02

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780719096372

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"... The book demolishes a number of historiographic myths and stereotypes surrounding intellectual disability in the Middle Ages and suggests new insights with regard to 'fools', jesters and 'idiots'.


Mental Retardation in America

Mental Retardation in America

Author: Steven Noll

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2004-02

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 0814782485

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The expressions "idiot, you idiot, you're an idiot, don't be an idiot," and the like are generally interpreted as momentary insults. But, they are also expressions that represent an old, if unstable, history. Beginning with an examination of the early nineteenth century labeling of mental retardation as "idiocy," to what we call developmental, intellectual, or learning disabilities, Mental Retardation in America chronicles the history of mental retardation, its treatment and labeling, and its representations and ramifications within the changing economic, social, and political context of America. Mental Retardation in America includes essays with a wide range of authors who approach the problems of retardation from many differing points of view. This work is divided into five sections, each following in chronological order the major changes in the treatment of people classified as retarded. Exploring historical issues, as well as current public policy concerns, Mental Retardation in America covers topics ranging from representations of the mentally disabled as social burdens and social menaces; Freudian inspired ideas of adjustment and adaptation; the relationship between community care and institutional treatment; historical events, such as the Buck v. Bell decision, which upheld the opinion on eugenic sterilization; the evolution of the disability rights movement; and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.


Those They Called Idiots

Those They Called Idiots

Author: Simon Jarrett

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2025-04-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1789143020

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Sensitive and sweeping, this is a history of the little-known lives of people with learning disabilities from the communities of eighteenth-century England, to the nineteenth-century asylum, to care in today’s society. Those They Called Idiots traces the little-known lives of people with learning disabilities from the communities of eighteenth-century England to the nineteenth-century asylum, to care in today’s society. Using evidence from civil and criminal courtrooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels, art, and caricature, it explores the explosive intermingling of ideas about intelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of people often seen as the most marginalized in society.


Mental Disability in Victorian England

Mental Disability in Victorian England

Author: David Wright

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2001-10-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0191554359

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This book contributes to the growing scholarly interest in the history of disability by investigating the emergence of 'idiot' asylums in Victorian England. Using the National Asylum for Idiots, Earlswood, as a case-study, it investigates the social history of institutionalization, privileging the relationship between the medical institution and the society whence its patients came. By concentrating on the importance of patient-centred admission documents, and utilizing the benefits of nominal record linkage to other, non-medical sources, David Wright extends research on the confinement of the 'insane' to the networks of care and control that operated outside the walls of the asylum. He contends that institutional confinement of mentally disabled and mentally ill individuals in the nineteenth century cannot be understood independently of a detailed analysis of familial and community patterns of care. In this book, the family plays a significant role in the history of the asylum, initiating the identification of mental disability, participating in the certification process, mediating medical treatment, and facilitating discharge back into the community. By exploring the patterns of confinement to the Earlswood Asylum, Professor Wright reveals the diversity of the 'insane' population in Victorian England and the complexities of institutional committal in the nineteenth century. Moreover, by investigating the evolution of the Earlswood Asylum, it examines the history of the institution where John Langdon Down made his now famous identification of 'Mongolism', later renamed Down's Syndrome. He thus places the formulation of this archetype of mental disability within its historical, cultural, and scientific contexts.


Inventing the Feeble Mind

Inventing the Feeble Mind

Author: James Trent

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0199396205

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Pity, disgust, fear, cure, and prevention--all are words that Americans have used to make sense of what today we call intellectual disability. Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of this disability from its several identifications over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental defect, mental deficiency, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability. Using institutional records, private correspondence, personal memories, and rare photographs, James Trent argues that the economic vulnerability of intellectually disabled people (and often their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual and social limitations, has shaped meaning, services, and policies in United States history.


Idiocy

Idiocy

Author: Patrick McDonagh

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1846310954

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In ancient Athens, “idiots” were those selfish citizens who dishonorably declined to participate in the life of the polis, and whose disavowal of the public interest was seen as poor taste and an indication of judgment. Over time, however, the term idiot has shifted from that philosophically uncomplicated definition to an ever-changing sociological signifier, encompassing a wide range of meanings and beliefs for those concerned with intellectual and cognitive disability. Idiocy: A Cultural History offers for the first time a analysis of the concept, drawing on cultural, sociological, scientific, and popular representations ranging from Wordsworth’s “Idiot Boy” and Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge to Down’s “Ethnic classification of idiots.” It tracks how our changing definition of idiocy intersects with demography, political movements, philosophical traditions, economic concerns, and the growth of the medical profession.


Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society

Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society

Author: Stef Eastoe

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-19

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 3030273350

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This book explores the understudied history of the so-called ‘incurables’ in the Victorian period, the people identified as idiots, imbeciles and the weak-minded, as opposed to those thought to have curable conditions. It focuses on Caterham, England’s first state imbecile asylum, and analyses its founding, purpose, character, and most importantly, its residents, innovatively recreating the biographies of these people. Created to relieve pressure on London’s overcrowded workhouses, Caterham opened in September 1870. It was originally intended as a long-stay institution for the chronic and incurable insane paupers of the metropolis, more commonly referred to as idiots and imbeciles. This purpose instantly differentiates Caterham from the more familiar, and more researched, lunatic asylums, which were predicated on the notion of cure and restoration of the senses. Indeed Caterham, built following the welfare and sanitary reforms of the late 1860s, was an important feature of the Victorian institutional landscape, and it represented a shift in social, medical and political responsibility towards the care and management of idiot and imbecile paupers.