Straightening children and reconstructing men: Medical discourse on physical therapies and people with 'disabilities,' 1885--1920

Physicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries felt an imperative to "correct" people with disabilities. This medical perspective resulted from prevalent social conceptions about people with disabilities as being of low moral character and a drain on society. Physicians felt pressure to "correct" people with disabilities to get them into the workplace and make them more "socially productive." Competition for stature between rising medical specialties also fed this imperative, as different specialties attempted to demonstrate that their methods provided the most effective correction. Physical therapies, especially forms physical activity, constituted critical components in the therapeutic battery used to fulfill the correction imperative.;This dissertation analyzed changes in the medical discourse regarding the treatment of people with physical disabilities during the period from 1885 to 1920. The medical discourse was examined through an analysis of articles in medical journals. In particular, the study employed a method of discourse analysis combined with selected techniques of thematic content analysis. This study helps recapture the dominant conceptions of the ways and reasons that the bodies of people with disabilities could be moved, used, or manipulated. Further, in concentrating on the use of physical activity, it helps uncover precursors to later forms of adapted physical education and disability sport.;From the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War, physicians focussed primarily on treating particular childhood disabilities, such as bone tuberculosis and poliomyelitis. The therapies for these conditions discursively influenced the treatment prescribed for other people with disabilities. It was argued that the work of one physician, R. Tait McKenzie, was demonstrative of the place of physical therapies in the medical battery. Like many other physicians, McKenzie believed that physical therapies such as electricity and massage were akin to physical activity in their therapeutic effect. During the period of the First World War, the keyword for medicine was "physical reconstruction." Physicians drew on a wide array of medical therapies to "reconstruct" the thousands of newly disabled veterans. In using medical measures such as physical therapies to "straighten children and reconstruct men," physicians believed they were not only improving their patients, but society, as well.