00:00:15:22 - 00:00:50:04
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So one of the problems that a historian of disability encounters when engaging upon disability history is that disability means various things to various people. And it's a very broad category. So we can think about intellectual disability in the past. We can think of by physical disability in the past. I'm going to be speaking about an example of somebody who had ambulatory needs requirements.

00:00:50:06 - 00:01:30:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So I'm talking about physical disability. In the past when we think about the 18th century. We have to be very careful not to transpose what we know about disability today onto the 18th century. The 18th century, like any period, has its own, ideas about the disabled, body, about disabled embodiment. There is a very kind of rich and interesting and problematic terrain to traverse when it comes to language about disability.

00:01:30:22 - 00:02:15:14
Dr Declan Kavanagh
In the past. We may start, with a, example from Samuel Johnson that heavyweights of 18th century letters. We may start with an example from his dictionary published in 1755. And if we look up the word disability in Johnson's dictionary, we get a definition that goes as follows. Want of power to do anything. Weakness, impotence. So this sense of disability that we get here is about want of power, weakness or impotence.

00:02:15:16 - 00:02:52:18
Dr Declan Kavanagh
It's very clearly linked to physicality. So disability in this definition is about physical, disability, physical impotence, a want of power. But what does that mean? How does that align with our current understanding of disability? Well, it doesn't really. It aligns in so much as here. Johnson is talking about a want of power to do anything. There's something impaired going on.

00:02:52:18 - 00:03:03:12
Dr Declan Kavanagh
There's something, there that is clearly connected to physicality. But that's where the definition stops.

00:03:03:24 - 00:03:41:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Scholars of the 18th century who work on disability, like David M Turner, they really face the problem of writing disability history before disability existed in its modern sense. So to be disabled today, to inhabit that identity, it really means that you have a physical impairment, an intellectual impairment. But you also are disabled, and therefore you have certain rights and entitlements to accommodations.

00:03:42:00 - 00:04:10:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
There is a sense that, you know, some people who are disabled don't want to identify as disabled. Some do. Disability identity is incredibly complex in our own time, let alone thinking about it in the past and what scholars like David Turner point to in their their book disability in 18th Century England Imagining Physical Impairment, which was published in 2012.

00:04:10:11 - 00:04:40:06
Dr Declan Kavanagh
They point to this problem of writing about disability before disability in its modern sense has emerged, has taken shape. So there's a sense of the 18th century being an incredibly sort of complex terrain upon which to talk about a disabled subject. What does that mean? We've already seen that the, the, the dictionary definition in Samuel Johnson's weighty tome.

00:04:40:08 - 00:04:49:08
Dr Declan Kavanagh
His dictionary. But that doesn't really help us to understand fully what disability might mean in that period.

00:04:49:08 - 00:05:26:24
Dr Declan Kavanagh
The language of the period when it comes to disability is quite interesting. So in the 18th century, the term disabled, as we've seen in Johnson's dictionary definition, is about a want of power or impotence. And it's very closely connected in this period to fitness for military or naval service. So the word disabled, if we see it used in the 18th century, it's often used about a soldier who has a want of power, who has been disabled in service.

00:05:27:01 - 00:06:03:17
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And that kind of Kashkari of the disabled is very much connected to military service to, naval or military service. So that's really what disabled means in the 18th century. There is another word that's used which is connected to disability, and that is deformity. Deformity as a word is a word that tracks many kinds of physical and intellectual disabilities that we would recognize today.

00:06:03:19 - 00:06:28:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
It's a hurtful word. This is an issue when we are looking at disability in the past. We are going to encounter words that are hurtful, that are that are difficult to process in relation to, disabled people, people we know and we care about. We may be disabled ourselves. We are going to encounter words like deformity in an 18th century context.

00:06:28:09 - 00:07:08:07
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Deformity signals disability in lots of ways. Another word that is connected to disability at this time is the word sin. So there are different ways of thinking about disability throughout history. There is the charity model, the medical model, and the social model. And in the 18th century, the charity model is really the model that is used when we're thinking about when people in the 18th century were thinking about disability.

00:07:08:09 - 00:07:40:07
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And in the charity model, which goes way back to the medieval period. The person who is disabled is disabled, and the cure for that disability is seen as prayer or the giving of alms. So somebody who presents with a physical or ambulatory disability, the kind of the response to that is prayer or the giving of alms, the giving of charity, the charity model.

00:07:40:09 - 00:08:10:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Now within that model, disability is seen as a sin. So it is a punishment. It is a punishment for that person's sin or the sin that their family have apparently committed. This is a very problematic way of thinking about disability, but it is an historical sense, the way that disability was thought about. And it would be a mistake, actually, to think that this model has just evaporated over time.

00:08:10:24 - 00:08:36:13
Dr Declan Kavanagh
There are still people who think of disabled people and disability in this, in this framework of the charity model. We then have the medical model, which does start to emerge in the 18th century, which sees disability as a dysfunction in biomedicine. So the disability is something that has happened to the person. It's a flaw, something that is wrong with them.

00:08:36:15 - 00:09:10:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And the cure is not prayer or alms as it is in the charity model. It is medical intervention. It is the apothecary. It is the medic. It is the job of medicine to solve or cure that disability. And this is a model that begins in the 18th century, but really takes shape and hold in the 19th century as medicine, as a profession starts to emerge, as medicine becomes professionalized.

00:09:10:17 - 00:09:44:24
Dr Declan Kavanagh
We then have, in the 20th century, from the mid-20th century onwards, Mike Oliver, his social model and this model known as the social model, which was developed by Mike Oliver, really sees the environment as the disabling factor. So it's not the person with a disability who is disabled, it's the environment that disables them. So the example is a person in a wheelchair, can access a building if there is an accommodation, there, if there is a ramp, if the environment is made accessible.

00:09:45:01 - 00:10:22:07
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Therefore the kind of the access issue is the question in the social model, it's the social environment that is disabling, not the person who has a particular need. That is not a model that exists in the 18th century. We have the charity model. This idea of disability being a sin that needs, you know, prayer. And, and we have the beginnings of the medical model, this sense that disability is a dysfunction in biomedicine, something that is inherent, that can be cured through medicine.

00:10:22:07 - 00:10:44:21
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And it's the clinic. It's the, the pot. It's it’s the doctor who has the responsibility for doing that. So we're not quite at the point of the social model in the 18th century. That comes much later. We have charity and we have the medical model starting to kind of interact.

00:10:45:11 - 00:11:29:01
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Now, if we go back to Samuel Johnson's dictionary and look up the word deformity, we can start to tease out an 18th century kind of language around disability. So deformity in Johnson's dictionary, as we can see here, is described as ugliness or ill favoured ness. Ill-favoured ness connects in some way to the charity model. This idea that to be disabled is a punishment, a punishment for sin so ill favoured in this kind of gently touches upon that idea of the disabled person being punished, ill favoured.

00:11:29:03 - 00:11:59:04
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Ugliness is talking about physical, disability, or the presentation of that. And then if we look at the second part of Johnson's, definition of deformity, he talks about ridiculousness, the quality of something worthy to be laughed at, the quality of something worthy to be laughed at. So what we have encoded then, in this definition of deformity is a nod to disability being connected to sin.

00:11:59:06 - 00:12:31:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And that charity model that I spoke about, but also this sense of the disabled, person being a figure of ridicule and that the quality of, you know, their, their sort of their representation, their sort of physical embodiment, that very quality has something worthy to be laughed at, which is a very heartful articulation, but I think speaks a lot about the ways in which 18th century culture and society saw disability.

00:12:40:03 - 00:13:17:16
Dr Declan Kavanagh
In the 18th century. We have a kind of rise in print culture. We have more people reading. We have print matter being cheaper. We have a kind of preoccupation with new kind of forms, like the essay. And the essay as a literary form becomes a sort of privileged space for authors begin to talk about themselves, in, in interesting ways, ways that haven't really been captured before.

00:13:17:16 - 00:13:54:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And one of those authors is William Haigh, who was born in, Glyndebourne, Sussex, in 1695. He's orphaned quite early on, 1700s. He attends grammar school. He studies law. Matriculate at Christchurch, Oxford. He contracts smallpox in 1715. And he sort of suffers with that till 1718. And this actually creates a kind of, an issue with his vision.

00:13:54:09 - 00:14:22:02
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He becomes visually impaired. He has curvature of the spine. So he's he's quite kind of, short in stature. And this marks him out as kind of having a kind of deformed body. What we would describe nowadays as kind of disabled embodiment at the time, he's marked out in terms of the 18th century preoccupation with deformity.

00:14:22:02 - 00:14:46:06
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He marries Elizabeth Phelan. He's elected as an MP. In 1734. And he publishes an essay known as to Form an essay in 1754, which goes through a series of editions before he dies in 1755. And in this essay, he takes deformity as his topic.

00:14:46:08 - 00:15:08:00
Dr Declan Kavanagh
In other words, we may say he takes disability as his topic. If we were to put it into a 21st century parlance, because we know that that word deformity in an 18th century context is speaking to experiences that we would now describe as the experiences of people with impairments or disabilities.

00:15:08:00 - 00:15:22:11
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So William Hayes essay deformity has a kind of unique place in terms of disability history and the history of disability in 18th century Britain.

00:15:22:11 - 00:16:26:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
It is the first essay in the 18th century, that takes disability as its subject and is also written from the perspective of somebody who is disabled. So William Hay, as an author, has this unique experience, and he uses the essay form to communicate that experience. So there have been essays before, William Hay's deformity and essay that have taken to pharmacy and disability as a subject to explore, but hay is the first person who is disabled to write from that experience, and to actually use that experience as a positive, as a, as a kind of as a way of opening up the, the kind of the question of experience and for mercy.

00:16:26:24 - 00:16:51:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So this is incredibly interesting from, a kind of history of disability perspective and 18th century perspective, but also the history of the essay as well. In the opening of his essay, hay says that it is offensive for a man to speak much of himself. And you can do this with so good a grace as Montana. Now he's talking about Montana.

00:16:51:23 - 00:17:18:04
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He's talking about a series of essays by Montana that most learned people will have an awareness of. If they haven't read the essays, they will know kind of snippets or quotes from Montana. So he's pointing here to a kind of history of the essay. He's saying, you know, it's offensive for people to speak about themselves, but actually, if they're going to speak about themselves, they'll do it in the essay form.

00:17:18:04 - 00:17:52:13
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And I know Montana, who has written these essays. So there's a kind of set up here. He says, I wish I could or that I could be half so entertaining or instructive. My subject, however, would be my apology, and I'm sure it will draw no envy upon me. Bodily deformity is visible to every eye, but the effects of it are known to very few, intimately known to none but those who feel them, and they generally are not inclined to reveal them.

00:17:52:13 - 00:18:31:06
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So hay here is talking from a place of lived experience, and he is announcing at the start of deformity an essay that he will be writing from this place of lived experience. And this is quite new. The essay is beginning at this time in the 18th century, to be a literary form that is introducing readers to an inner world, the sense of interiority that, a reader can tap into, this sense of the author having an interiority.

00:18:31:08 - 00:19:18:08
Dr Declan Kavanagh
But here he is really using that to introduce the reader to the lived experience of the deformed person, an experience that we certainly do not get in dictionary definitions like Johnson's, which talk about the quality of deformity being something that is worthy of ridicule. So here we're getting a very different entry point into this question of deformity. He says that physical deformity, bodily deformity is visible to every eye, but the effects of it are known to very few, intimately known to none but those who feel them, and they generally are not inclined to reveal them.

00:19:18:10 - 00:19:59:02
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So in this early opening of the essay, we're getting this sense that what he is about to reveal here is something that generally people do not know. People do not have access to. So the false modesty at the start that he says about, you know, not being as entertaining as Montagnier and so on, it is false because really, what he's saying here is I'm going to tell you something that is going to change how you think about deformity and to put it in to 21st century parlance, how do you think about disabled people?

00:19:59:04 - 00:20:23:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So in the beginning of this essay, then we get this sense that the essay form is going to reveal an interiority that is unique to the deformed subject, the person with deformity. In the 18th century, it's intimately known to none but those who feel them, and they generally are not inclined to reveal them.

00:20:23:23 - 00:20:29:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Now, William Hay talks about.

00:20:29:24 - 00:21:07:15
Dr Declan Kavanagh
His own deformed physicality as not being productive of envy that this is not a position that people are going to want to emulate or to to, to sort of, to be there is a sense that this is a position that has left him at a disadvantage. And he talks kind of very early on about the dangers of being, physically different in an 18th century public space.

00:21:07:15 - 00:21:44:12
Dr Declan Kavanagh
There's a lot about mental health in his depiction of his physical difference in his essay on deformity. And although it's not really described in this way, we can read into his depiction of, his very existence in the 18th century and public space. We can read into that a kind of very anxious account. So there's lots here about anxiety and about the ways in which people's reaction to him, creates anxiety.

00:21:44:12 - 00:22:13:14
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So he writes about kind of how he navigates through, London through different sort of public spaces. He says, when by some uncommon accident, I have been drawn into a country fair, a cockpit bare garden to the like riotous assemblies. After I have got from them, I have felt the pleasure of one escaped from the danger of a wreck.

00:22:13:16 - 00:22:48:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So he's talking here about a country fair. So like you can imagine like a marketplace. He's talking about cockfighting. He's talking about what he describes as riotous assemblies, and he's talking about his own sort of his own kind of situated ness in those public places. And he feels in danger. He is, of a smaller stature. He has difficulty in terms of his movement because of the curvature of his spine.

00:22:49:00 - 00:23:20:10
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And he feels in danger navigating those places. He talks about when he is in private, when he is alone, having left, you know, the outside world closing the door behind him that he feels a pleasure, as if he has escaped from the danger of a wreck. He says for all the time I am present; I consider myself as liable to affront without a power of showing any resentment which would expose me to tenfold ridicule.

00:23:20:10 - 00:23:49:19
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Again, back to this idea of ridicule. His deformity is a basis for ridicule in the 18th century, and that kind of sense of, you know, him being worthy of ridicule. That's dictionary definition. That's what Johnson says about deformity. And he is here reproducing that attitude by saying, you know, that he is, if he shows any resentment to the way people engage with him, it will expose him to tenfold ridicule.

00:23:49:19 - 00:24:13:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So he would be even more, sort of exposed to people's laughter and ridicule. He goes on to say, nor am I formed for a masquerade where such a figure would soon be discovered. Now the masquerade is a ball that is part of polite society. It also is a ball where people from different classes can attend depending on the actual event.

00:24:14:00 - 00:24:55:15
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And it is a it is a masquerade. People dress up, they disguise themselves. And here he is saying he can't disguise himself because his body is so misshapen that any disguise would reveal his shape and reveal who he was. So there's a sense here that he is, you know, unable to participate in the kind of public events, and the sort of social gatherings of, a man of his class at this time in the 18th century, nor in my form for the masquerade, where such a figure would soon be discovered, nor escape abuse from the lower class whom the mask introduces to their betters.

00:24:55:15 - 00:25:19:18
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So he's talking here about lower class people attending some masquerades and that they would abuse him. So the way that he talks about class is very interesting. He seems to be very wedded to the upper class, and he presents the upper class as being more favourably disposed to deformity, to to men like him, to two kind of, well, welcoming men like him into their company.

00:25:19:20 - 00:25:52:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And he kind of presents the lower class as a sort of rabble, as a mob who would abuse him with a front him. We have to be suspicious of that kind of framing. He is writing for a particular audience, and I have no doubt that members of the upper class also ridiculed him or ridiculed people with deformities, but it makes sense for him to want to ingratiate himself and his words into, a kind of, a favourable position to ingratiate himself into a favourable position with members of the upper class.

00:25:52:22 - 00:26:00:17
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So there's a kind of snobbery that attends his representations, which are, you know, is quite interesting.

00:26:00:17 - 00:26:17:12
Dr Declan Kavanagh
But he talks about the lower class, as you know, being able to disguise themselves at masquerades introduced to their betters. And we're all indulged a greater liberty of behaviour. So there's a sense of the masquerade as a kind of carnivalesque time of permission, a possibility.

00:26:17:14 - 00:26:56:18
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And here he is saying that his bodily deformity marks an eye, even in that kind of realm of freedom and permissiveness, that the masquerade is meant to represent. So there's a sense of him being completely at a disadvantage of being at risk in public. There's a sense of his mental health being damaged by being in public, and a sense of kind of needing to get relief to retreat, to, to leave the public world behind because his body marks him out as being so different, maybe two different to exist safely in public.

00:26:56:22 - 00:27:18:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He also talks about men coming along and kind of leaning on him, using him as a sort of a kind of a leaning post or something to lean on. So he really talks about ways in which in public he is, maligned and, and kind of disrespected. His body does not command respect.

00:27:18:18 - 00:27:45:16
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Now, I spoke a little bit about the ways in which he, in his essay, talks down to the lower classes. Certainly there's issues with the way in which he talks about women in his essay. If you read it, you will see that there's also this sense that, hey, is anti, clubs like the ugly club. Now, the ugly club again ugly meaning deformity.

00:27:45:16 - 00:28:22:12
Dr Declan Kavanagh
We could talk about the ugly club as being, a club for people who, are disabled or varying abled or impaired. The ugly club, is, is a real club. There is an ugly club, in the 18th century in Liverpool. But what he is probably talking about here is the depiction of the ugly club in the Spectator, which is written by, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, and it's presented as a club in Oxford for men with ugly faces, essentially.

00:28:22:18 - 00:28:51:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And it is a University of Oxford club. There is a letter in the spectator that depicts this club and really, what the spectator is doing. And presenting this ugly club is kind of satiating people's desires to know more about how people are associating. There's a sense of, you know, the ridiculous, that this is a kind of point of ridicule that men are arranging themselves or joining this club because they're ugly.

00:28:51:23 - 00:29:19:10
Dr Declan Kavanagh
This kind of depiction of, you know, of these men in the spectator. There's also an ugly club in that Ward's Secret History of Clubs, which, again, is talking about a kind of back, a curiosity is being satiated there in terms of associational culture. Now, what he is doing here, in talking about the Ugly Club is he's kind of saying that it shouldn't exist.

00:29:19:12 - 00:29:53:24
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He's saying I never was nor never will be a member of the ugly club. And I would advise those gentlemen to meet no more. For though they may be a very ingenious and facetious society, yet it draws the eyes of the world too much upon them, and there's too much from the world for who would choose to be always looking at bad pictures when there is so great a collection to be met with, of good ones, especially among the fair sex, who, if they will not admit them to be intimacies, will permit them to be distant admirers.

00:29:54:05 - 00:30:31:21
Dr Declan Kavanagh
When deformed persons appear together, it doubles the ridicule because of the similitude, and it does when they are seen with very large persons because of the contrast. So this is incredibly interesting. Here we have, hey, writing an essay that foregrounds lived experience of deformity, but at the same time arguing against any kind of assembly of deformed men. Deformed people, disabled people should not assemble together, should not draw the eye towards them.

00:30:31:23 - 00:30:59:21
Dr Declan Kavanagh
There is a sense here of a lack of solidarity, actually with other disabled, what we would call disabled people at the time. So there's kind of really conflicting messages going on, really interesting messages going on in his essay. On the one hand, it's an essay that is, you know, foregrounding lived experience, Hayes lived experience of being, you know, having curvature of the spine being, of, of a short stature.

00:30:59:23 - 00:31:31:20
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He doesn't talk about blindness, but he is actually also visually impaired. So there's lots going on in that kind of way in which the essays foregrounding that experience. But then even within the essay, he's saying Ugly Club should not exist. Therefore, people who have disabilities or have, you know, differences should not assemble in these ways. So there's something really interesting going on with the kind of limitations of a kind of, representation of lived experience that is very bound to the 18th century.

00:31:31:20 - 00:31:48:11
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So here he is, very kind of much speaking from a particular class position, a particular gendered position. And that class and gendered position does not outweigh,

00:31:48:13 - 00:31:59:21
Dr Declan Kavanagh
That gender and class position outweighs any kind of solidarity that he may, may have for, other people who are classed as deformed.

00:32:07:24 - 00:32:43:19
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Masculinity is a huge topic in Hay's essay, the way in which he talks about the lived experience of, somebody with, curvature of the spine, some someone of his stature is absolutely connected also to the ideals of the 18th century gentleman. So he is very much talking about his own experience and the ways in which that experience does.

00:32:43:19 - 00:33:16:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And doesn't not line to the protocols of masculinity that he has internalized as all men of his class have internalized in the 18th century. We can see in a particular moment of his essay this idea of masculinity coming into attention with, deformity or disability, he notes, for I can bend my body no farther than it is bend by nature.

00:33:17:00 - 00:33:59:18
Dr Declan Kavanagh
For this reason, when ladies drop a fan or gloves, I'm not the first to take them up, and often restrain my inclination to perform those little services rather than expose my spider like shape. He also talks about not being able to stand up when company enters a room. So there are these kinds of moments of what he describes as shortcomings in his own ability to perform the social niceties that are expected of men, the picking off of a fan or gloves that a woman may drop.

00:33:59:20 - 00:34:45:01
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He has to. He feels he has to restrain his inclination to perform that service, because it may expose the shape of his body, which then in turn may lead to ridicule. So there is this sense that he is very aware that his own unique physicality, which is perceived as deformity in this period, is really in tension with his sense of himself as a man, his sense of himself as a gentleman, which is bound to class, and the kind of compulsion that he feels to perform masculinity.

00:34:45:03 - 00:35:21:00
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And this is a particular point of the essay that he's inviting readers to think about. It could be that he is trying to demonstrate that he is even more manly, because he is saving, you know, women in that, in that, you know, instance from the awkwardness of him kind of appearing as a spider like shape he's trying to reclaim, I think in this part of the essay, some sense of his own masculinity.

00:35:21:02 - 00:35:49:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And again, we can see that disability or deformity for he is much more than a physical state. It has cultural meanings. And he wants readers to know about these cultural meanings and the impact that deformity has on his own sense of gendered self.

00:35:57:22 - 00:36:34:01
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Something that's really interesting about the essay that he writes. Is that it? It starts, with many examples of deformity as a disadvantage. And we've spoken or thought about some of that already in terms of the way in which he navigates public space, the anxiety that that kind of navigation produces, the effect that it has on his mental health.

00:36:34:03 - 00:37:21:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
There's also the example of masculinity and the ways in which his physicality does not allow him to perform some of the cultural trappings that are associated with gentlemanly behaviour in that particular period, the picking up of a club or a fan that a woman has dropped, for example, the standing up, when somebody comes into a room, these are all things that, hey, you know, writes about and kind of, bemoans really is quite upset and, and, and troubled, by his inability to, perform masculinity or to exist in space in a kind of autonomous, independent and safe way.

00:37:22:00 - 00:38:16:09
Dr Declan Kavanagh
However, there is a turn in the essay towards the end, a kind of turn in tone, a shift that makes disability or deformity seem like a positive thing in and of itself. And this is really a very interesting, powerful move by hey, he starts to talk about deformity and health and particularly men's health. And he says, on the whole, I conclude that deformity is a protection to a man's health and person, which, strange as it may appear, are better defended by feebleness than strength.

00:38:16:11 - 00:38:59:03
Dr Declan Kavanagh
In this kind of moments in the essay, what he is putting forward is this idea that, yes, he may find it difficult to navigate public space. Yes, he may not be able to perform, the sort of the social niceties and rituals attached to gentlemanly ness in a full way, but actually. His feebleness, what he calls his feebleness, is better for his health than his strength or lack of strength.

00:38:59:05 - 00:39:27:07
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So he's saying that because his own physicality is deformed, because of that very deformity, he has had to take protections, and he has had to live in a certain way. That means that those protections and that lifestyle make him healthier overall. He's not going to be engaging in duels. He's not going to be challenging other men to a duel.

00:39:27:09 - 00:39:58:19
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He's not going to be in an environment where it may be riotous and he may be, physically injured. He also talks about, you know, a kind of health regime, the sort of things that he eats up abstaining from food, from alcohol. He has found a way to be healthy, but also to promote a kind of healthiness that is based on his lived experience of deformity.

00:39:58:21 - 00:40:36:07
Dr Declan Kavanagh
This is huge. This is a huge claim for him to make in this essay, an essay that begins describing the negatives of, deformity, an essay that begins describing the negatives of deformity and actually ends by promoting the lived experience of the deformed person as a form of health advice. This is incredibly modern. This is incredibly, bold in some ways of hate to say yes, I am deformed.

00:40:36:09 - 00:41:11:06
Dr Declan Kavanagh
You think that being deformed is a basis for ridicule, for maligning me? Well, actually, deformity has taught me things that can be used to better your health. So suddenly, at the end of the essay deformity. This lived experience at the essay form, this is Gene Ray is kind of showcasing for the reader. He is using that form, using the essay form to tell the reader you can learn from me.

00:41:11:08 - 00:41:31:00
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Actually, my lived experience of being deformed in the 18th century is a resource. It is valuable. Deformed people have knowledge, have experience that is valuable.

00:41:31:00 - 00:42:02:14
Dr Declan Kavanagh
a big part of this value for hey, in the deformed experience or the disabled experience, the physically different experience, a big part of this value is to do with the mind. So there's a shift towards the end of his essay where he's talking about, you know, health advice, where he talks about his mind as opposed to his body.

00:42:02:16 - 00:42:24:20
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He ends the essay with health advice, and he moves from this kind of object body, this body that is frightened to be in crowds, that is at risk, that is anxious, that is unable to perform certain cultural codes of masculinity. He shifts from that to talk about the mind.

00:42:24:20 - 00:42:46:23
Dr Declan Kavanagh
that he has as a deformed man, as a disabled man, I'm using those two terms interchangeably here for the sake of clarity. The experience that he has led him to perfect his mind. So there is this sense of the deformed person is not just being a body, but being a body mind.

00:42:46:23 - 00:43:12:05
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And that actually is an idea that is very central to disability studies, contemporary disability studies to not just think of the body as a body, but to think of the body as interacting with the mind, the body mind. And we get this articulation, this 18th century articulation from, hey, of his experience as not being just bound to the body, but also being bound to the mind.

00:43:12:05 - 00:43:39:06
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So he's saying, yes, judge me is deformed, but also, I am a man who's written this essay and this is a in some ways, beautiful essay. It's the form of the essay is in some ways polished and beautiful. It has come from a mind that is, well, in some ways that is more advance, that is scholarly, that is superior.

00:43:39:08 - 00:44:22:01
Dr Declan Kavanagh
So there is a sense here that he is saying deformity for him has led him to perfect his mind, that he is of a superior intellect because of his physical difference. So, again, his physical deformity is in some ways for him a resource for him to better his intellect. And he's saying at the end of the essay, you know, I've written this essay, I've shown you that I can think at this level, the disabled person, the deformed person is not just a body, is not just a body.

00:44:22:03 - 00:44:56:00
Dr Declan Kavanagh
And his essay harnesses the literary form of the essay to recentre how deformity is considered by readers. Readers at the end of this essay can no longer look at a deformed person or representation of a deformed person, a caricature, and not see the mind that is also there, the body mind that he is putting forward in deformity. An essay in a really interesting move as well.

00:44:56:02 - 00:45:22:15
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He talks about a frontispiece that usually essays like this would come with a frontispiece, an engraving, a picture of the author, and in the essay deformity, he does not provide this picture. It's not published with a picture. And he makes a point of this. And essentially he says in not so many words, the picture isn't there because you would ridicule the picture.

00:45:22:17 - 00:45:51:22
Dr Declan Kavanagh
Going back to Johnson's dictionary definition of deformity as, you know, worthy of ridicule instead of the picture. He has written this essay so you don't get a picture of, hey, you get his words, and his words describe his body, but they also describe him as a fuller person, as a person with an intellect, a body mind. So he is is not just reducible to an image.

00:45:51:22 - 00:46:29:10
Dr Declan Kavanagh
He's not just reducible to an image of deformity that can be ridiculed. His essay has ensured that that's not possible. And this is a kind of mode of resistance that he is in some way offering to others who may be, disabled. There may be a point where others who are deformed can read this essay, identify with it, and also realize that they are more than the stereotype, the caricature, the ways in which the culture they inhabit satirize this deformity that is one part of their story.

00:46:29:10 - 00:46:56:13
Dr Declan Kavanagh
But it is not everything because he has successfully, in this essay, begun with that terrain, and then moved on to it to talk of himself as a body mind, as being more than his body, but also to talk about the ways in which his deformed embodiment is a resource, what he has learned about the body, what he has learned about frailty, what he has learned by being a precarious subject.

00:46:56:15 - 00:47:25:19
Dr Declan Kavanagh
These are all kind of realizations through experience that can help everybody can can help people be healthier, be safer. So there's a sense then of the deformed body as being a resource, as being not just something to ridicule, but something to learn from. And that's incredibly important,