Main Conent

"What Is Wrong with You?"

With the incorporation of medicine into more aspects of daily life in the 20th century, health practitioners and scientists closely studied human variations.

child doctor black white photograph disability history america

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.