[PDF] The Menace Of The Feeble Minded In Pennsylvania eBook

Author : James W. Trent (Jr.)
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 37,57 MB
Release : 2017
Category : History
ISBN : 0199396183

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Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of intellectual disability from its several identifications in the United States over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental deficiency and defectiveness, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability.

Author : James Trent
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 26,17 MB
Release : 2016-11-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0199396205

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Pity, disgust, fear, cure, and prevention--all are words that Americans have used to make sense of what today we call intellectual disability. Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of this disability from its several identifications over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental defect, mental deficiency, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability. Using institutional records, private correspondence, personal memories, and rare photographs, James Trent argues that the economic vulnerability of intellectually disabled people (and often their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual and social limitations, has shaped meaning, services, and policies in United States history.

Author : Dennis B. Downey
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 30,23 MB
Release : 2020-04-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0271086386

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Conceived in the era of eugenics as a solution to what was termed the “problem of the feeble-minded,” state-operated institutions subjected people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to a life of compulsory incarceration. One of nearly 300 such facilities in the United States, Pennhurst State School and Hospital was initially hailed as a “model institution” but was later revealed to be a nightmare, where medical experimentation and physical and psychological abuse were rampant. At its peak, more than 3,500 residents were confined at Pennhurst, supervised by a staff of fewer than 600. Using a blended narrative of essays and first-person accounts, this history of Pennhurst examines the institution from its founding during an age of Progressive reform to its present-day exploitation as a controversial Halloween attraction. In doing so, it traces a decades-long battle to reform the abhorrent school and hospital and reveals its role as a catalyst for the disability rights movement. Beginning in the 1950s, parent-advocates, social workers, and attorneys joined forces to challenge the dehumanizing conditions at Pennhurst. Their groundbreaking advocacy, accelerated in 1968 by the explosive televised exposé Suffer the Little Children, laid the foundation for lawsuits that transformed American jurisprudence and ended mass institutionalization in the United States. As a result, Pennhurst became a symbolic force in the disability civil rights movement in America and around the world. Extensively researched and featuring the stories of survivors, parents, and advocates, this compelling history will appeal both to those with connections to Pennhurst and to anyone interested in the history of institutionalization and the disability rights movement.

Author : Wilhelmine E. Key
Publisher : Forgotten Books
Page : 71 pages
File Size : 36,90 MB
Release : 2015-06-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781330311929

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Excerpt from Feeble-Minded Citizens in Pennsylvania: Being the Report of a Survey of a Certain Locality Comprising About 700 Square Miles and Having a Population Estimated at 16, 000, During the Four Months From August 7 to December 6, 1914 for the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania The following survey, made by Dr. Wilhelmine E. Key, of Polk, Pennsylvania, for the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania, was made possible by the generosity of Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury of Philadelphia, to whom not only the Association but the State owes a debt of gratitude. The State of Pennsylvania is caring for about four thousand feeble-minded. It supports two institutions for this class of dependents and is in process of constructing a new one to be used exclusively for feeble-minded women of child-bearing age. It also pays a private institution for the feeble-minded to care for quite a number of such persons for whom the State has no accommodation. The waiting list of the three existing institutions is apparently from eight hundred to one thousand. A recent investigation of the hospitals and asylums caring for the dependent insane in Pennsylvania, including the County almshouses having insane patients, indicates that, collectively, they are caring for at least five or six hundred feeble-minded. Although reliable statistics are not available as to the number of mental defectives in the various penal and correctional institutions of the State, in view of the fact that the combined census of these institutions exceeds ten thousand, the experience of other communities would make it almost certain that the number of feeble-minded confined in such places is considerable. The same thing is probably true of the various homes and asylums for dependent children. Experts who have made a special study of the incidence of feeble-mindedness tell us that the number of people of this character at large in the community and, therefore, not included in any of the classes above described, far exceeds those receiving any sort of custodial care. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Author : Steven Noll
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 35,32 MB
Release : 2018-06-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1469647702

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The problem of how to treat the mentally handicapped attracted much attention from American reformers in the first half of the twentieth century. In this book, Steven Noll traces the history and development of institutions for the 'feeble-minded' in the South between 1900 and 1940. He examines the influences of gender, race, and class in the institutionalization process and relates policies in the South to those in the North and Midwest, regions that had established similar institutions much earlier. At the center of the story is the debate between the humanitarians, who advocated institutionalization as a way of protecting and ministering to the mentally deficient, and public policy adherents, who were primarily interested in controlling and isolating perceived deviants. According to Noll, these conflicting ideologies meant that most southern institutions were founded without a clear mission or an understanding of their relationship to southern society at large. Noll creates a vivid portrait of life and work within institutions throughout the South and the impact of institutionalization on patients and their families. He also examines the composition of the population labeled feeble-minded and demonstrates a relationship between demographic variables and institutional placement, including their effect on the determination of a patient's degree of disability. Originally published in 1995. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Author : Susan Baglieri
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 41,46 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Education
ISBN : 0415993725

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This work's mission is to integrate the fields of disability studies and inclusive education. It focuses on the broad, foundational topics that comprise disability studies (culture, language, history, etc.) and moves into the more practical topics normally associated with inclusive education.