With US soldiers stationed around the world and engaged in multiple conflicts, Americans will be forced for the foreseeable future to come to terms with those permanently disabled in battle.At the ...moment, we accept rehabilitation as the proper social and cultural response to the wounded, swiftly returning injured combatants to their civilian lives. But this was not always the case, as Beth Linker reveals in her provocative new book, War's Waste. Linker explains how, before entering World War I, the United States sought a way to avoid the enormous cost of providing injured soldiers with pensions, which it had done since the Revolutionary War. Emboldened by their faith in the new social and medical sciences, reformers pushed rehabilitation as a means to "rebuild" disabled soldiers, relieving the nation of a monetary burden and easing the decision to enter the Great War. Linker's narrative moves from the professional development of orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists to the curative workshops, or hospital spaces where disabled soldiers learned how to repair automobiles as well as their own artificial limbs. The story culminates in the postwar establishment of the Veterans Administration, one of the greatest legacies to come out of the First World War.
This essay explores the multiple sites where disability appears in the history of medicine and suggests ways in which medical historians can self-consciously incorporate a disability perspective into ...their own work. Just as medical historians have much to learn from disability historians, disability historians could benefit from looking more closely at the history of medicine. While disability cannot (and should not) be reduced to disease, the fact remains that some forms of disability are brought about by disease processes, and some require daily regimes of home health care, therapy, and pain management. How the disabled have interacted with health care institutions, caretakers, and the medical establishment is too significant to be written out of its history.
In 2004, the US Preventive Services Task Force called for an end to scoliosis screening in US public schools. However, screening endures, although most nations have ended their screening programs. ...Why? Explanations range from America's unique fee-for-service health care system and its encouragement of high-cost medical specialism to the nation's captivation with new surgeries and technologies. I highlight another, more historical, reason: the persistence of the belief that spinal curvature is a sign of a progressive disease or disability. Despite improved health and the mid-20th-century discovery of antibiotics and vaccines that all but eradicated the diseases historically associated with scoliosis (e.g., polio and tuberculosis), the health fears associated with spinal curvature never fully dissipated. Scoliosis is still seen as a "dangerous curve," although the exact nature of the health risk remains unclear.
The Body Politic in Pain Linker, Beth
Perspectives in biology and medicine,
2017, Letnik:
60, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In his 2015 book Pain: A Political History, Keith Wailoo demonstrates how a medicalized condition became central to defining party politics in the United States from World War II down to the present. ...Drawing on sources ranging from postwar Congressional hearings concerning the veteran welfare state to debates surrounding Rush Limbaugh's OxyContin addiction, Wailoo offers a fresh analysis of both U.S. political history and medical history, showing how today's highly polarized party system emerged in part from debates surrounding the existence and worth of pain, as well as its management.
Despite their missing limbs, these soldiers had "overcome" their injuries to the point of being able to fight once again in what was then considered the manliest of all martial arts: hand-to-hand ...combat.
Spines of Steel LINKER, BETH
Bulletin of the history of medicine,
2016, Letnik:
90, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Just as the prevalence of scoliosis began to decline precipitously after World War II, American orthopedic surgeon Dr. Paul R. Harrington devised a new, invasive surgical system whereby implantable ...prosthetic metal rods and hooks were used to straighten curved backs. By the 1970s, "Harrington rods" had become the gold standard of surgical scoliosis care in the United States, replacing more conventional methods of exercise, bracing, and casting. This article situates the success of Harrington rods within a much larger and historically longer debate about why, when compared to those in other nations, American surgeons appear to be "more aggressive" and "knife-happy." Using Harrington's papers and correspondence, I argue that patients played a vital role in the rise of spinal surgery. As such, this article examines not only how surgical enthusiasm has been historically measured, defined, and morally evaluated, but also how scoliosis became classified as a debility in need of surgical management.
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