Artifacts from Modern America by Helen Sheumaker

Author:Helen Sheumaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440846830
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

SIGNIFICANCE

Wheelchairs were invented because there was a need for them. Sometimes individuals suffered illnesses that left limbs paralyzed (see Health and Medicine—Antibiotics Penicillin Sample), such as polio; others suffered accidents, while still others were born with physical issues impairing movement or neural problems that inhibited mobility. But it was modern warfare that led to the invention of medical technologies that aided physical mobility.

After the American Civil War (1861–1865), family members welcomed back injured soldiers. At the time, disability was an unfortunate outcome of the war; there was no concerted effort to address the lives of maimed soldiers except to fund “Old Soldiers’ Homes” for retired or dying veterans. World War I produced almost 1 million disabled veterans. Ironically, while antibiotics were not yet in use, sulfa-based drugs and better surgical methods led to larger numbers of soldiers surviving devastating injuries. Mustard gas, widely used in the war (see Tools and Weapons—Children’s Gas Masks, World War I for a discussion of chemical weapons), sometimes left soldiers with permanent injuries such as withered legs from tissue damage. Disabilities moved from being a misfortune to being a social ill. Viewed as weakened men dependent on society and unemployable, disabled veterans were a threat to American society. Rehabilitation, a multipronged approach of physical therapy, was supposed to render these “unusable” men into productive laborers for American businesses.

After World War II, the rehabilitation model gained in power because the U.S. government had founded the Veterans Administration (VA) in 1930. The VA built rehabilitation facilities across the country. These federally funded hospitals, racially segregated just as the armed forces were, attempted to rehabilitate soldiers for the work world. Improvements in medical technology, prosthetics, and wheelchairs made this more possible. Once rehabilitated and placed in jobs, disabled soldiers had little protection from discrimination, physical barriers, and inadequate services.

Not all disabilities are physical; intellectual disabilities offer their own challenges. Like physical disabilities, the lives of those with intellectual disabilities are both profoundly personal and deeply shared. From 1900 to 1930, those with intellectual disabilities were often institutionalized. These large-scale hospitals and residential homes reflected a desire to protect the larger society from so-called defectives. Policies worked to control those with intellectual disabilities through incarceration, forced sterilization, and forced labor. Surgical procedures such as lobotomies, in which the frontal lobe of the brain was severed in sections to render the patient compliant and inert, were used to control the behavior of patients beginning in the 1930s. Some institutions were well run and benevolent but ultimately enforced control over inmates; other institutions were abusive and exploitative. There was little government oversight.

The institutional approach continued well into the 1950s. The lack of state and federal laws meant that individuals with intellectual disabilities were at the mercy of those running the institution. Forced sterilization, conducted by medical professionals, continued at increasing rates. In the 1950s several prominent women began to introduce more humane approaches to treating those with intellectual disabilities. Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973), a popular novelist, had a daughter, Carol, in 1920.

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