Epidemics And Disability

Abstract

This essay argues that considering disability and disability history needs to be part of any history of epidemics. Recent scholarship has shown the many intersections of disability history and history of medicine. This essay argues that disability plays many roles in an epidemic from establishing pre-existing conditions, to affecting the acute phase of the disease, to creating lingering disabilities in the long aftermath. Histories of epidemics that ignore the many ways in which disability affects the experience of an epidemic are incomplete.