On this page you will find a variety of resources to do with the history of visual impairments / blindness as well as some terminology which may assist you in searching for further resources.
Sight Correction : vision and blindness in eighteenth-century Britain by
The debut publication in a new series devoted to the body as an object of historical study, Sight Correction provides an expansive analysis of blindness in eighteenth-century Britain, developing a new methodology for conceptualizing sight impairment. Beginning with a reconsideration of the place of sight correction as both idea and reality in eighteenth-century philosophical debates, Chris Mounsey traces the development of eye surgery by pioneers such as William Read, Mary Cater, and John Taylor, who developed a new idea of medical specialism that has shaped contemporary practices. He then turns to accounts by the visually impaired themselves, exploring how Thomas Gills, John Maxwell, and Priscilla Pointon deployed literature strategically as a necessary response to the inadequacies of Poor Laws to support blind people. Situating blindness philosophically, medically, and economically in the eighteenth century, Sight Correction shows how the lives of both the blind and those who sought to treat them redefined blindness in ways that continue to inform our understanding today.
Blindness : the history of a mental image in Western thought by
This is a remarkable study of how Western culture has represented blindness, especially in that most visual of arts, painting. Moshe Barasch draws upon not only the span of art history from antiquity to the eighteenth century but also the classical and biblical traditions that underpin so much of artistic representation: Blind Homer, the healing of the blind, blind musicians, blindness as punishment, blindness as a special mark. The book discusses blindness in antiquity, in the Early Christian world, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, with a final consideration of Diderot.
Stumbling blocks before the blind : medieval constructions of a disability by
"Bold, deeply learned, and important, offering a provocative thesis that is worked out through legal and archival materials and in subtle and original readings of literary texts. Absolutely new in content and significantly innovative in methodology and argument, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind offers a cultural geography of medieval blindness that invites us to be more discriminating about how we think of geographies of disability today." ---Christopher Baswell, Columbia University "A challenging, interesting, and timely book that is also very well written . . . Wheatley has researched and brought together a leitmotiv that I never would have guessed was so pervasive, so intriguing, so worthy of a book." ---Jody Enders, University of California, Santa Barbara Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind presents the first comprehensive exploration of a disability in the Middle Ages, drawing on the literature, history, art history, and religious discourse of England and France. It relates current theories of disability to the cultural and institutional constructions of blindness in the eleventh through fifteenth centuries, examining the surprising differences in the treatment of blind people and the responses to blindness in these two countries. The book shows that pernicious attitudes about blindness were partially offset by innovations and ameliorations---social; literary; and, to an extent, medical---that began to foster a fuller understanding and acceptance of blindness. A number of practices and institutions in France, both positive and negative---blinding as punishment, the foundation of hospices for the blind, and some medical treatment---resulted in not only attitudes that commodified human sight but also inhumane satire against the blind in French literature, both secular and religious. Anglo-Saxon and later medieval England differed markedly in all three of these areas, and the less prominent position of blind people in society resulted in noticeably fewer cruel representations in literature. This book will interest students of literature, history, art history, and religion because it will provide clear contexts for considering any medieval artifact relating to blindness---a literary text, a historical document, a theological treatise, or a work of art. For some readers, the book will serve as an introduction to the field of disability studies, an area of increasing interest both within and outside of the academy. Edward Wheatley is Surtz Professor of Medieval Literature at Loyola University, Chicago.
The Blind in French Society from the Middle Ages to the Century of Louis Braille by
The integration of the blind into society has always meant taking on prejudices and inaccurate representations. Weygand's highly accessible anthropological and cultural history introduces us to both real and imaginary figures from the past, uncovering French attitudes towards the blind from the Middle Ages through the first half of the nineteenth century. Much of the book, however, centers on the eighteenth century, the enlightened age of Diderot's emblematic blind man and of the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, founded by Valentin Haüy, the great benefactor of blind people. Weygand paints a moving picture of the blind admitted to the institutions created for them and of the conditions under which they lived, from the officially-sanctioned beggars of the medieval Quinze-Vingts to the cloth makers of the Institute for Blind Workers. She has also uncovered their fictional counterparts in an impressive array of poems, plays, and novels.The book concludes with Braille, whose invention of writing with raised dots gave blind people around the world definitive access to silent reading and to written communication.
Blind in early modern Japan : disability, medicine, and identity by
While the loss of sight--whether in early modern Japan or now--may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) could thrive because of disability. The blind of the era were prominent across a wide range of professions, and through a strong guild structure were able to exert contractual monopolies over certain trades. Blind in Early Modern Japan illustrates the breadth and depth of those occupations, the power and respect that accrued to the guild members, and the lasting legacy of the Tokugawa guilds into the current moment. The book illustrates why disability must be assessed within a particular society's social, political, and medical context, and also the importance of bringing medical history into conversation with cultural history. A Euro-American-centric disability studies perspective that focuses on disability and oppression, the author contends, risks overlooking the unique situation in a non-Western society like Japan in which disability was constructed to enhance blind people's power. He explores what it meant to be blind in Japan at that time, and what it says about current frameworks for understanding disability.
Pioneers and perseverance : a history of the Royal School for the Blind, Liverpool (1791-1991) by 
Blind workers against charity : the National League of the Blind of Great Britain and Ireland, 1893-1970 by
Founded in 1893, the National League of the Blind was the first nationwide self-represented group of visually impaired people in Britain. This book explores its campaign to make the state solely responsible for providing training, employment and assistance for the visually impaired as a right, and its fight to abolish all charitable aid for them.
The American Glaucoma Society : its founding and first 25 years by
Nothing begins from nothing. For everything new under the sun, there is a history (or at least a theory) of what preceded it and made it possible. With regard to each human accomplishment, it is nearly always possible to trace it back to earlier accomplishments that provided the foundation on which the subsequent advance was achieved. This thought is often expressed in the old quotation, OC If I seem to see farther than those who came before me, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.OCO And so it was with the founding of the American Glaucoma Society (AGS). The remarkable history of the first 25 years of the American Glaucoma Society."
The History of Modern Cataract Surgery by
Surely the threat of blindness from whatever cause, is an event faced by an ever-growing segment of our aging population. However, when the cause was cataract formation, over the centuries a definite treatment evolved and became available to help those afflicted with this problem, from couching, through crude extra-capsular Graeffe knife extraction, intra-capsular cataract surgery, and planned extra-capsular surgery, to phacoemulsification (ultrasound or laser). Doctors, therefore, recognized very early that there was one blinding condition which could be treated and in which vision could be improved. It is probably this operation that gave rise to ophthalmology as the first surgical subspecialty. In the same way that Alexander Flemming accidentally discovered the mould producing penicilinase, during the Second World War Harold Ridley identified an inert plastic monomer substance that could take the place of the human lens in the human eye, and appeared to cause no secondary side-effects. However the Ridley lens combines with the extracapsular surgery of the time, proved to be an unsatisfactory technique for the cataract patient. It was Cornelius Binkhorst from the Netherlands who proposed a more satisfactory fixation device, first to the iris pupil and then to the posterior capsule. At the same time, Peter Choyce refined the anterior chamber lens to create a stable replacement treatment the crystalline lens. This book, written and edited by two of the world's most eminent eye surgeons, traces the historical events that have brought us to what is now current thought for the present millennium.
The National Federation of the Blind (US) has published The Braille Monitor since 1957. It covers the events and activities of the NFB, addresses the issues blind people face, and highlights their members. The archive of the Braille Monitor covering 1957 to 2017 can be accessed online. Each article has an an audio equivalent.
Issues from 1957 to 1986 are also available in accessible form from the Internet Archive at archive.org.
"Louis Braille (4 January 1809 – 6 January 1852) was a French educator and the inventor of a reading and writing system named after him, braille, intended for use by visually impaired people. His system is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day." Wikipedia article on Louis Braille, accessed 5 Aug 2024.
