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Ambroise Paré’s medical ‘monsters’
In the collected works of Ambroise Paré (c. 1510–90), first published in French in 1575, a ‘Book of monsters and prodigies’ appears alongside other subjects including the setting of bones, the identification of parasites, and the treatment of wounds. Paré,… Continue reading
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Disability and religion: call for papers
This three-day conference marks the 10th Anniversary Annual Meeting on ‘Disease, disability and medicine in medieval Europe’. It will be hosted by Swansea University at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, 2–4 December 2016. The conference aims to explore the interactions between disability… Continue reading
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A gift for Disability History Month
A Gift for Love is a film about a seven-year-old girl, Judy, played by Amanda Humby, finding her mother the perfect Christmas present with the 6 shillings and 8 pence in her money box. The only problem is that they… Continue reading
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Brett: then and now
Roger Graef is a distinguished theatre producer, documentary film maker and founder of the production company Films of Record. He curated a programme of films around science on film for the 75th anniversary of the Wellcome Trust in 2011. It… Continue reading
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Thalidomide: an oral history
To mark the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of the drug thalidomide from sale the UK in 2012, Professor Anne Borsay of Swansea University embarked on a project to collect oral testimonies from a cross-section of the thalidomide population. I… Continue reading
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Disability and sex: a history of suppression
This is an extract from an article first published in the Wellcome Trust online journal Mosaic: the science of life. It is republished here under a Creative Commons licence. Disabled people’s sexuality has been suppressed, exploited and, at times, destroyed… Continue reading
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The Contact
For 2013, the theme of UK Disability History Month (22nd November to 22nd December) is: Celebrating our struggle for independent living: no return to institutions or isolation. Such issues were nascent in the early 1960s and surface in a film called… Continue reading
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The Education of Helen Keller
Helen Keller is arguably the most famous disabled person in history. Her extraordinary achievements despite losing both sight and hearing at the age of just 19 months have been the subject of numerous films and books. However, not everyone was… Continue reading
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‘Migrants and Medicine’
This Thursday (17th January), Research Engagement Officer Ross MacFarlane will be participating in the first of a new series of events organised by the Migration Museum Project. Details: Migrants and Medicine: Paralympics, Psychology and Pharmaceuticals What do migrants bring to our… Continue reading
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Charles Barbier, Petite typographie privée d’ambulance
At first glance, this image might look familiar. It’s a coded text that uses raised dots to be read by the fingertips. But one group of people who won’t find the code easy to understand are readers of Braille.… Continue reading