Based on the latest theories of disease, he has protected himself from Cholera in every fashion known. He is wearing a skin of rubber patched with tar, then covered with six yards of flannel. A copper plate covers his heart. He also carries juniper berries, peppercorns, cotton soaked in camphor, smelling salts, a cigar, a mash of peppermint dough, and garments soaked in lime chloride.
Illness is no longer a supernatural event.
Some of us remember grandparents who believed that medicine should taste bad to be effective. In answer to that demand, medical treatment of disability has evolved from the use of supernatural interventions and magic, through quarantine, expulsion and institutional segregation, to the current belief in inclusion and integration. Medical science allows us to reduce the complications of many disabling medical conditions. We can now give people with disabilities lives and independence in ways early doctors could only dream of. Reviewing the history of how we came to this philosophy helps us learn from our experiences and not repeat past mistakes.