Tag: Disability
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Limping into victory
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel There were people with disabilities in history who were not “limping into oblivion,”1 but rather paved their way to accomplishments and victories.2 The emperor Claudius, who may have had cerebral palsy or dystonia, reigned in the first century AD. During that time, the Roman Empire expanded greatly. He decreed that if…
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On becoming a disabled physician
Mel Ebeling Birmingham, Alabama, United States Hephaestus at the Forge. Sculpture by Guillaume Coustou the Younger, 1742. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Jastrow) on Wikimedia. Public domain. The same prominent scar blemishes each foot: beginning two inches below my big toe, it slithers along the medial aspect of my foot, making…
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Queer and unked: Disability, monstrosity, and George Eliot’s “Sympathy”
Christina Lee Kent, United Kingdom Silas finds Eppie. Eliot, George. The Jenson Society, NY. In The Mill on the Floss, the intellectual and sensitive Philip Wakem, who has a curved spine from a fall in infancy, is called “a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.”1(II.vi) In the manuscript Philip Wakem is branded…
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New life
Hannah Joyner Takoma Park, Maryland, United States Photography by dierk schaefer At first I thought I had a sinus infection, expecting to come home with a course of antibiotics. The doctor initially agreed, but when he heard my account of facial numbness spreading around my left eye, he referred me immediately to a neurologist,…