Welcome!

Workshop: Rare Health Conditions (People with

Physical or Mental Disabilities) Workshop leaders: Veronika Završki, Toni Šafer

how people dealt with diseases which were unknown to them or rare at the time

Introduction

12.7.2016. Tuesday

13:30-14:30 - Introduction & Veronika Završki: "Joseph Carey Merrick" 14:30-15:00 - Lena von den Driesch: „St. Anthony’s fire – a divine punishment?“ 15:00-15:30 - Thomas Pichler: „Michael Foucault: „Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason“ 15:30-16:30 - Short Break 16:30-17:00 – Dario Prati: „Class kills“ 17:00-17:30 – Ashley Taylor: The social prejudices of English society towards those with either physical or mental illness in the 1960s. 17:30-18:00 - Thomas Durlacher : „Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed births in Early Modern Europe.“ 18:00-18:30 - Doris Stadler: "Shaping social images around 1900. An investigation of two case studies of hysterical and paranoid patients." 18:30-19:00 - Martin Reichstam: "Constructing (ab-) normality"

Workshop schedule

14. 7. 2016. Thursday

15:00-15:30 - Karoliina Sjö: "Kirsti Teräsvuori" 15:30-16:00 – Gabriela Fesnak: "Saartjie Baartman

- `The Hottentot Venus`" 16:00-16:30 - Short Break 16:30-17:00 – Saša Jerič: "Hysteria in the 19th

century" 17:00-19:00 - FINAL CONCLUSION

Joseph Merrick

The Elephant Man

1862, Leicester Family„It is very strange, for, you see, mother was so beautiful”„Merrick family explained his symptoms as the result of Mary's being knocked over and frightened by a fairground elephant while she was pregnant with Joseph” Leicester Union

Workhouse

Joseph Carey Merrick

Freak shows Sam Torr gathered a group of investors—

including freak-show promoter Tom Norman—to organize tours for Joseph. Joseph’s new advisors suggested he perform under the name “The Elephant Man, Half-a-Man and Half-an-Elephant.”

1884.

„As at the time of my discovery of the Elephant Man I was the Lecturer on

Anatomy at the Medical College opposite, I was anxious to examine him in detail

and to prepare an account of his abnormalities.” (Treves, 1923)

„Here was a man in the heyday of youth who was so vilely deformed that

everyone he met confronted him with a look of horror and disgust.” (Treves)

Sir Frederick Treves: The elephant man and other

reminiscences

December, 1886. Smell, skin, voice… „Mr. Carr Gomm wrote a letter to the Times

detailing the circumstances of the refugee and asking for money for his support. So generous is the English public that in a few days – I think in a week – enough money was forthcoming to maintain Merrick for life without any charge upon the hospital funds.”

Reading Dressing up Queen Alexandra – then Princess of Wales

„Here was a being with the brain of a man, the fancies of a

youth, and the imagination of a child”

Country, dressing bag

Theatre

Death

• 1890, Joseph was founddead, with no sign of struggle.

• The desease ? Not elephantiasis but a genetic disorder neurofibromatosis type I or Proteus syndrome

1923 „The Elephant Man and Other

Reminiscences” Ashley Montagu: „The Elephant Man: A Study

in Human Dignity” Tom Norman Nadja Durbach: „The Spectacle of Deformity:

Freak Shows and Modern British Culture”

Popularity

Freak shows – were they purely exploitative or did

they generate popular and scientific debates over the meanings attached to bodily difference

Nowadays…?

Discussion