With the incorporation of medicine into more aspects of daily life in the 20th century, health practitioners and scientists closely studied human variations.
Some kinds of variation and human conditions were categorized as deficits, requiring treatment, prevention, or fixing. Scientific advances created expectations that the human body could and should be medically treated. Bodily difference gradually became a medical issue. The person became a patient with her or his individuality transformed into a medical case.
Image Gallery
Click on an image to see a larger version. Use either the navigation buttons that appear or your keyboard’s Left and Right arrow keys to view other images in the gallery. (Notes for users with assistive technologies.)
This shirtless man with severe acne covering his back is depicted in familiar medical fashion—anonymous and focused on pathology.
Ritalin, used since the 1950s to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, became far more popular in the 1990s.
Cochlear implants, first used in the 1960s, produce sound for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. This one in a dark blue velvet-lined box includes the transmitter, speech processor, microphone, and internal receiver.
A doctor might remove one of these two pointed steel rods from its black leather case, insert behind a patient’s eye and destroy the prefrontal lobe of the brain. Doctors treated unruly or depressed patients by lobotomy from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Medical textbooks such as this typically highlighted the pathology of the patient, often at the expense of the person’s modesty and self-respect. Here, a doctor demonstrates muscle manipulation on two nude children.
This woman’s infirmity requires her to rest under blankets and a shawl. Two female friends keep her company.
Porcelain cup with spout and handle, decorated with flowers.
This clear glass container was designed to lie on its side to prevent spilling and allow drinking from a prone position. The box indicates night and day use.
The National Surgical Institute claimed to cure people such as this girl in a blue frock at the top of some stairs. She discarded her crutches and leg brace. A boy who still needs crutches awaits his cure at the bottom of the stairs.
Doctors use the drug lithium to treat people diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. It prevents extreme mood fluctuations from mania to depression.
This orthopedic device, called a Browne splint, was invented in 1931 and is still occasionally used. Toddlers wore it to prevent “in-toeing” by adjusting hip, foot, and tibia angles.