Comment - On the Borderland of Medical and Disability History
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(c) Johns Hopkins University Press
“Beth Linker’s essay, ‘On the Borderland of Medical and Disability History: A Survey of the Fields,’ raises important issues about the ways the history of medicine and disability history have interacted and should interact in the future. Rather than adopting the metaphors of ‘rival siblings’ or ‘conjoined twins,’ she suggests that each field pursue its own course but recognize ‘family resemblances’ and a need occasionally to come together for the mutual benefit of the family. Let me say at the outset that I generally endorse her argument that both the history of medicine and disability history can benefit from a mutually respectful relationship.
As Linker notes, many of the early historians writing disability history strongly rejected the medical model of disability, and implicitly at least the history of medicine. Instead, they adopted a social model of disability, in which disability is constructed and imposed by society, and wrote a distinct disability history. Just as contemporary disability activists demanded that people with disabilities decide and speak for themselves, so disability historians created a new approach independent of the history of medicine, which many regarded as giving insufficient attention to the history of people with disabilities. These disability histories privilege the individual with a disability and treat medical professionals as less central to the story. In these ways, disability history, as Linker suggests, replicated the development of other minority histories such as women’s history and African American history.
Now that its legitimacy seems ensured, with its own organization, several book series, and numerous publications over the past twenty years, Linker rightly looks to ways in which the two histories (medicine and disability) can cooperate in their mutual interest. I am struck when I teach the history of medicine how much of that history is distinct from disability history. The history of the medical profession, of its institutions such as dispensaries, hospitals, and medical schools, of discovering the causes of diseases and how to prevent or cure them, and of public health, often stands apart from the history of disability.”
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