The road to Dr Down's idiot asylum: the creation of the idea of intellectual disability c.1700-1867. (360G-Wellcome-101937_Z_13_Z)

In 1867 Langdon Down, the superintendent of the worlds first idiot asylum at Earlswood, wrote his ethnic classification of idiocy. This assumed the right of the medical profession to identify, control and treat the condition of idiocy. It was a remarkable change from the conceptualisation of idiocy through the eighteenth and most of the first half of the nineteenth century, when the medical profession had shown little interest in idiocy and those classed as idiots had lived in their communities and families. This thesis will examine the conceptual transformation which took place over the long 18th century, transforming the idea of the idiot from a harmless natural who could be sustained within local communities to a helpless, pitiful and sometimes dangerous presence who required medicalised institutional protection, control and isolation. Asking 'how did the medicalisation of idiocy occur, and the idea of intellectual disability emerge?' the aim of the research will be to identify continuities and changes in the conceptualisation of idiocy. These discourses will be placed within the constellation of ideas and attitudes that constituted the Enlightenment science of humanity, leading to a quasi-scientific concept of the idiot which still feeds norms and assumptions about intellectual disability today.