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Disability in ancient Rome


Disability in ancient Rome was recorded in personal, medical, and legal period writing. Some people with disabilities were sought to be slaves, while others with a disability that modern medicine recognizes today were not considered disabled. Other disabilities were deemed more acceptable than others. The acknowledgement of disability in ancient Rome is usually limited to small medical references in scattered works.

While working in Rome, Soranus of Ephesus wrote in his books on gynaecology that only certain children were worth raising. He listed the tests one could perform on a child to check for undesirable qualities, and deformities to look for in newborn children to ensure they were not disabled. He held a similar opinion on who was suitable to be a midwife or wet nurse, stating that a person needed to be both physically and mentally capable in order to successfully do these jobs.

Roman physician Galen also mentions the deficiencies of people with disabilities in his works on anatomy, claiming that both physical and mental handicaps result in the onset of the four humors .

Roman doctors separated mental disorders into two categories; those that could be cured, and those that were not then considered a disability of the body. Amongst the latter were addictions, most commonly vinolentia.

Roman doctors had a variety of terms for varying degrees of optical impairment, depending on the strength of the individual's eyes. Aulus Cornelius Celsus in his treatise On Medicine (De Medicina), devoted a chapter to the subject of common eye infections, disease, problems, and the cures for each.

The Twelve Tables included a law that said disabled or deformed children should be put to death, usually by stoning. They also stipulated that if a free person or slave was disabled by an individual, that was cause for payment or similar disfigurement.

In addition, Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote that the city's founder Romulus required children who were born disabled to be exposed on a hillside. Historians think that this was a fairly common practice due to a believed high number of congenital defects, which are sourced due to poor nutrition, incest, and disease. As time passed, however, the practice of this law became less common until eventually there was a complete change in legislature in the third century, when it was required to take care of infants who were disabled.


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