Rethinking modern prostheses in Anglo-American commodity cultures, 1820–1939 (Disability History)

Drawing together essays written by scholars from Great Britain and the United States, this book provides an important contribution to the emerging field of disability history. It explores the development of modern transatlantic prosthetic industries in nineteenth and twentieth centuries and reveals how the co-alignment of medicine, industrial capitalism, and social norms shaped diverse lived experiences of prosthetic technologies and in turn, disability identities. Through case studies that focus on hearing aids, artificial tympanums, amplified telephones, artificial limbs, wigs and dentures, this book provides a new account of the historic relationship between prostheses, disability and industry. Essays draw on neglected source material, including patent records, trade literature and artefacts, to uncover the historic processes of commodification surrounding different prostheses and the involvement of neglected companies, philanthropists, medical practitioners, veterans, businessmen, wives, mothers and others in these processes. Its culturally informed commodification approach means that this book will be relevant to scholars interested in cultural, literary, social, political, medical, economic and commercial history. Cover 1 Half Title 3 Series Information 4 Title Page 5 Copyright Page 6 Dedication 7 Table of Contents 9 List of Illustrations 11 List of Contributors 13 Series editors' foreword 17 Acknowledgements 19 Introduction 21 I The commodification of hearing aids and aids to hearing 45 1 Purchase, use and adaptation: Interpreting ‘patented’ aids to the deaf in Victorian Britain 47 Deafness vs. hearing loss as interpretive themes 48 Hearing aids as patent ‘solutions’ for deafness 51 The hearing-aid companies: Rein, Hawksley and Arnold 53 The predatory hearing-aid ‘patentees’ 56 Personalising hearing aids in use 59 Conclusion 61 Notes 63 2 Between cure and prosthesis: ‘Good fit’ in artificial eardrums 68 Designating a cure 70 Design modifications 71 Patenting practice 77 Unseen comfort 81 Conclusion 83 Acknowledgements 84 Notes 84 3 Inventing amplified telephony: The co-creation of aural technology and disability 90 Controversies and co-construction: the disputes surrounding the design of amplified telephony 93 The quest for standardisation: embodied knowledge immersed into measurement 97 The relationship between patents and community inventions 100 Conclusion 106 Notes 107 II The commodification of artificial limbs and associated appliances 111 4 ‘A hand for the one-.handed’: Prosthesis user-.inventors and the market for assistive technologies in early nineteenth-.cent 113 The publication of polite prostheses 115 Praise from respectable readers 120 Exclusions of class and gender 123 Conclusion 127 Notes 129 5 ‘Get the best article in the market’: Prostheses for women in nineteenth-.century literature and commerce 134 Indefatigability and invisibility: A. A. Marks’s legs for men and women 138 Fiction and falsehood: literary guides for selecting false teeth and artificial legs 143 Lumbering legs and wonderful wigs: commercial literature and fiction 146 Conclusion 151 Acknowledgements 152 Notes 153 6 Itinerant manipulators and public benefactors: Artificial limb patents, medical professionalism and the moral economy in ante 157 The ‘surgeon-.artist’: a productive hybridity 161 Patents, professionalism and moral economy 167 Notes 172 7 Separating the surgical and commercial: Space, prosthetics and the First World War 178 Demarcated spaces: limb-.fitting in the nineteenth century 179 Amputation and prostheses in the First World War 183 The reconfiguration of spaces 190 Conclusion 193 Notes 194 Select bibliography 199 Index 200 Rethinking modern prostheses contributes new insights into the historical experiences of disability through detailed exploration of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century foundations of modern prosthetic industries and its many complexities. Consumers have responded to prosthetic technologies in many different ways throughout history - while some have used them to assist everyday living, others have rejected such devices and the ways in which they 'fix' their impaired body to the medical profession's view of 'normalcy'. The diversity of lived experiences of prosthetic technologies is intricately tied to the co-development of medicine, modern industrial capitalism and markets in the nineteenth century. In this collection, essays are presented by scholars from a variety of historical sub-disciplines to explore the historic processes of commodification surrounding different prostheses, including artificial limbs, hearing devices, amplified telephones, wigs and dentures, and the involvement of previously neglected companies, medical practitioners, veterans, businessmen, wives, mothers and others in these processes. Essays shed particular light on a little-explored avenue in the history of disability: the significance of company investment in intellectual property protection. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, just as today, patenting and copyright enhanced product commercial viability. By drawing on a range of source material including trade literature, artefacts, patent records and works of fiction, the collection outlines some of the ways in which the expanding industries of prostheses and assistive devices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries formed a precursor to those we recognise today, but also provides an important contribution to the emerging field of disability history. With a focus on the historical co-development of prostheses, medicine and markets, Rethinking modern prostheses will be essential reading for scholars interested in cultural, literary, social, political, medical, economic and commercial history A collection of essays examining the development and commodification of prostheses in Britain and America that occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, due to the shift to standardized industrial manufacturing and associated market growth. -- .