Description
Book SynopsisCombines modern and medieval approaches to intellectual disability, and engages with a very wide range of sources in order to fill a major gap in this relatively new field, and demonstrate that disability, illness and healthcare are embedded in daily life.
Trade Review‘For this meticulous work in organizing evidence and arguments presented by scholars in multiple fields and languages, and focused on numerous geographies (though with a special bias towards England), specialists in the fields of disability, madness, folly, reason and unreason, and even childhood will find this work to be invaluable. This book is an opening gambit, not a definitive answer in the field, but it is a gambit for which future scholars will be very grateful indeed.’
Anne M. Koenig, University of South Florida
'A superbly researched addition to a largely unexplored field.'
Disability Studies Quarterly
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Table of Contents1 Pre-/conceptions: problems of definition and historiography
2 From morio to fool: semantics of intellectual disability
3 Cold complexions and moist humors: natural science and intellectual disability
4 The infantile and the irrational: mind, soul and intellectual disability
5 Non-consenting adults: laws and intellectual disability
6 Fools, pets and entertainers: socio-cultural considerations of intellectual disability
7 Reconsiderations: rationality, intelligence and human status
Index
