Museum of

Disability History

By Kate Egan

Hahaha lookat his wheelchair,what a Retard!

Hey boy! you should stop saying the R-word…

not only is it out of fashion, it’s not nice at all!

I bet you don’t know how people with disabilities were treated in the old days?• They were used for entertainment, religious

purposes, and many were feared, blamed, and punished for nothing (mistreated!)

Entertainers bought& exhibitedthe “freaks”for a profit

Used as court jesters in 15th

century

People with disabilities were hanged during the Salem Witch

Trials

Some “treatments” use to cure the mentally ill back then:

The spinning treatment. Others practices included: bloodletting, purging, blistering, and frightening the patient

Water considered to be a treatment (“hydrotherapy”) Mild electric shocking

Lobotomy treatment of the frontal lobe

Alcohol and Opium considered to be a treatment method for mental illness

Luckily, some nice individuals took the responsibility to help people with disabilities!

Dorthea Dix: She advocated for separate facilities for people withdisabilities after working in jails.

Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller, whom was blind and deaf.

Just to name a few…

Benjamin Franklin helped set up the Hospital in Philadelphia. It was the 1st hospital to create a section for the mentally ill and retarded. (yet it eventually mistreated the individuals)

Remember how great it was that hospitals, institutions, and asylums were created to treat the mentally ill?....well NOT SO GREAT!

Philadelphia Hospital

NYS Asylum for Idiots

Newark Asylum for “feeble-minded” women of child-bearing age. It tended to the "inherently promiscuous women and their crime prone offspring."

Let’s find out why…you’re going to be

shocked!...

Asylums were more like prisons for these people

Many patients were neglected, due to the common 1 staff per 40 patients ratio

Women were sent to institutions if they were prostitutes, pregnant and had a disability, or even if they’re husbands thought them to be “unfit wives.”

Some institutions shackled patients to the wall & people could pay money to look at

the “idiots”! They were even restrained & required to wear straight jackets like

what I’m wearing!

Ever hear of “Eugenics?” Well this guy Sir Francis Galton came up with the theory that mental and moral traits were hereditary. He advocated for the restrictions on the “breeding of the feeble minded.”

Many professional embraced Galton’s theory. The world began to

try and breed the “perfect race.” The Nazis took it to an extreme

level with extermination.

Immigrants with disabilities were restricted from coming into the

United States

Laws were passed

to sterilize people

with “defective”

traits: “criminals,

idiots, morons

feeble-minded.”

It was named

unconstitutional

later in history.

Luckily, as time passed and more people started to advocate for the individuals with disabilities, things started to change. It’s about time! Just to name a few…

• J.F.K. advocated for deinstitutionalization • Acts were passed for civil rights for people • with disabilities• Funds were created for the people with

disabilities• More awareness was spread• Medical advances

Over time, society has adjusted to people with disabilities and worked to make life less difficult for them. After all, they are humans too.

Want to know the correct way to refer to people that have

disabilities?It’s called “people first person language.” You should refer to the person first and then the

condition they have, because after all, they are people first. The disability doesn’t define who the

person is.For example: “a person who has a hearing impairment”

Okay, I’ll make sure I do that from now on. I feel

bad, people with disabilities were called

awful names back then.

I’m sorry about earlier, it was wrong of me. I’m going to pledge to stop saying the R-word and use people first

language and I’ll tell my friends too!

It’s okay, I’m just like you, except I can’t walk. Want to play basketball with me

later?

Spread the word to end the word!

Our language frames how we think about others.Help eliminate the use of the R-word in everyday speech!

RR

Like the Canisius College Facebook Page!

R

Now what have you learned from

all this?

I learned a lot! I feel terrible for laughing at that boy, it

was wrong of me. Some things I learned:

• People with disabilities were referred to as awful names like “feeble-minded, idiots, morons, and freaks”

• I can’t believe America allowed sterilization laws to go on. That’s such a violation of those people’s rights.

• I never knew how bad the institutions could get. Those people were treated so poorly.