Healing Spas and Ugly Clubs: How Victorians Taught Us to Treat People With Disabilities

Society didn’t have a concept of “lacking ability” until industrialization, which created an obsessive demand for “able-bodied workers” who could rapidly churn out mountains of goods. Unfortunately, the sciences of biology and medicine hadn't kept pace with advances in mechanical technology, so one infection or unfortunate encounter with a factory machine could lead to invalidism, loss of a limb, or early death. Thus the question arose: What to do with all these “unproductive” bodies?
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