A Medical History of Blindness 1900-1948. (360G-Wellcome-080133_Z_06_Z)

This project explores the medical history of blindness in Britain between 1900-1948, challenging current historical interpretations that emphasise charity, education and social policy. I argue that blindness became 'medicalised', meaning that it was treated as pathological and as a condition that required expert medical and technological intervention. This, as I show, was a significant reconceptualisation, spurred by new technologies that revealed an individual's visual acuity, allowing ophthalmologists to reassess the physiology of eye itself, and recast blindness as a measurable 'impairment' of normal vision. By the inter-war period, medical experts had classified ever increasing numbers of people as 'visually impaired'. In so doing, these experts simultaneously broadened and deepened the scope for professional intervention, creating new and more specialised treatment regimes for a wider cross-section of the population. Understanding the medicalisation of blindness also reveals the reconfiguration of social and cultural understandings of eyesight, blindness and visual impairment. I situate the medicalisation of blindness in both expert and everyday discourses, ranging from highly technical discussions about retrolental fibroplasia to popular editorialising about 'cinema fatigue'. My work will thus further our understanding of how notions of impairment and perception are shaped by targeted technologies, social environments and cultural constructs.