Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Medical History

Echoes of Care

Deafness in Modern Britain

by (author) Jaipreet Virdi

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2025
Category
History, Audiology & Speech Pathology
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780228023678
    Publish Date
    Feb 2025
    List Price
    $39.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

More than one billion people live with hearing loss, making deafness one of the most common disabilities in the world. Despite the size of deaf communities and their rich cultural histories, in the Western world deafness is perceived primarily as a medical problem requiring a fix. In nineteenth-century Britain the shift from viewing deafness as auditory difference to framing it as a condition in need of medical intervention came at the insistence of an emerging group of professionals: aurists.

Echoes of Care describes how British ear specialists sought to reshape deafness as a curable affliction that they were uniquely able to treat. Navigating a medical landscape fraught with professional rivalries and public distrust about the likelihood of a cure, aurists extended their authority towards key sites of intervention – the census, school medical testing, public health, deaf schools – to argue for the necessity of specialist care. Beneath the surface of these claims lay deeper questions about access to healthcare, cultural perceptions of disability, and the rise of eugenics.

Jaipreet Virdi explores the complex legacy of the medicalization of deafness and its profound implications for deaf history, culture, and lived experience.

About the author

Jaipreet Virdi is a historian of medicine, technology, and disability. She lives in Newark, Delaware.

Jaipreet Virdi's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Echoes of Care does a marvellous job of explaining why deafness was medicalized, providing an in-depth discussion of this topic for the first time.” Ruben Verwaal, Durham University