Disability and Independent Living Aids – a history
Physical disability and
the ensuing problems with mobility and the need for help when striving to
achieve something approaching a normal way of life is nothing new. Cures for
many conditions have been associated with the healing powers of water, but
getting to the water is not always easy.
‘Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool with five porches. A
large crowd of sick people were lying in the porches – the blind, the lame and
the paralysed. A man there had been ill for thirty eight years. Jesus asked
him, “Do you want to get well?”
The sick man answered, “Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when
the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there
first.”
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat
and walk.” Immediately the man was well, picked up his mat and walked.’
(St
John’s Gospel - 5 v 1-9)
Whilst
life expectancy in the developed world increases so do the problems of
mobility. However, partial loss of mobility is not the prerogative of the
elderly. Victims of accidents and combat troops in the armed forces also have
needs to be addressed. Also many children are in need of help.
We have had at Christmas, showing at the famous Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, the traditional dramatisation of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’.
Dickens and Christmas are almost inseparable and I, being a person not over
fond of the ‘festive season’, often can be heard quoting the miserly Scrooge
–“Bah, Humbug.”It has been claimed that Dickens was the first English novelist
to write with a social conscience. Certainly much of his writing highlights the
inequalities and suffering of much of the less fortunate of his fellow beings.
In ‘A Christmas Carol’ (1843) he
chooses the image of a disabled child to convince Scrooge to change his
miserable non-philanthropic ways.
Timothy Cratchit or
‘Tiny Tim’ is the child of Scrooge’s nephew Bob. Tiny Tim is disabled and has
to use a crutch or be carried about by his father. Tiny Tim may well have been
suffering from rickets and tuberculosis as a result of poor diet and lack of
vitamin B. The solution in the 1840’s would have been leg braces, similar to
those used by victims of polio.
Bob cannot afford to
pay for medical treatment but of course his uncle could well afford to help.
Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley.
Marley, weighed down by chains, padlocks and cash boxes warns Scrooge to change
his ways if he is not to share the same eternal torture. Scrooge was to be
visited by three other ghosts; Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas
Yet to Come, who whisk him off into those ghostly dimensions in an attempt to
bring Scrooge to a clear vision of himself.
The Ghost of Christmas
Present shows Scrooge a glimpse of Tiny Tim. He is told that Tim is ill and
will die if the family cannot raise the money to save him. When the Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come allows Scrooge one last vision, only a crutch is seen;
Tiny Tim had died as a result of poverty depriving him of treatment. Albeit
that Tiny Tim is a minor character, it is his fate that transforms Scrooge into
an unrecognisable, smiling and laughing philanthropist, thus avoiding the fate
of Jacob Marley.
It is interesting to
trace the historical development of
mobility products. We just take it for
granted that stair lifts, walking aids, bathing aids and so on are common
place, but is there any surprising history behind them? My research resulted in
some unexpected answers.
Perhaps the oldest
image is that found on an ancient Chinese stone slate. It appears to show a
person seated in a wheeled chair. A 16th century Greek frieze shows
an image of what looks like a wheeled bed, perhaps for a child. Did you know
that the humble wheel barrow was invented by the Chinese? It was a dual purpose
tool, not only for transporting material but also people.
From our history lessons, we are well aware
of King Henry VIII and his string of doomed wives. We may even associate him
with the reformation, schism with the Pope and the
beginnings of the Church of England. Few would know (and neither did the
writer) that he actually possessed and used a stair lift!
As a young man, Henry was slim, tall, athletic
and very handsome. In his later years,
he was obese. His armour dimensions record a height of 6’1” with a 53” chest
and a waist of a massive 52”. Henry jousted. Our Royals play polo, and, like
Prince Charles, he was known to take a few tumbles from his horse. Henry
sustained a jousting injury which together with his other pursuits resulted in
mobility problems in his latter years. From research carried out by the
historian David Starkey, amongst his possessions in Whitehall Palace was a
stair lift. It was a chair of wooden construction which was moved by a system
of ropes. Servants hauled on them and the ailing giant of a king was
transported up and down the stairs, in stately manner, on his chair lift
throne! Keith Simpson, managing director of Castle Comfort Centre, with its
head office in Wolstanton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, can no longer claim the title
of ‘
Stair Lift King’ it seems. Henry beat him to the accolade!
What possible connection could there be between
mobility products and the Spanish Armada?
There is in fact another Royal link in the
person of King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598)
Philip married Mary Tudor in the
old capital of England, Winchester, on the 25
th July 1554, just two
days after they met. Philip
used a wheel chair at the service. It was designed by one Jeham Lehermite. (shown in a sketch from 1595).The chair was
made from iron with small wheels on each of the four legs, a foot rest and an
adjustable back. With the marriage, he became King of England and Ireland. Mary
was a Catholic, and her marriage to the Catholic King of Spain was a move to
ensure that England once again became a seat of the Roman Faith. Mary died of
cancer in 1558 and was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth 1
st,
daughter of Henry VIII, and a protestant.
On the death of Mary Tudor, Philip lost his
claim to the English throne and had to resort to battle to defeat the English
Protestants. The Spanish launched a sea battle which was known as the Spanish
Armada. Neither the Spanish King nor the Pope could control the English
climate. The adverse weather forced the Spanish fleet to flee for shelter and
the battle was lost. King Philip, addressing the survivors, expressed his
exasperation at the defeat:
‘I sent
you to fight with men, not the weather.’
Here we see an image from
1680 of the renowned Chinese philosopher Confucius being grandly transported
along in what resembles the later concept of a wheel chair.
It
is arguable that the history of the wheel chair as a specific walking aid dates
back to 1655. Stephen Farfler, a young disabled watchmaker, set about solving
his own mobility problems. He built a wheel chair. Earlier vehicles needed
other people to pull or push them along, but Stephen wanted independence. His
design was a box-like structure supported by three wheels. He cleverly attached
a lever to the front wheel that could be turned to propel the chair along.
The next significant
period of wheel chair development was not to be seen until the 18th
Century.
What became known as a
Bath Chair, was built by one John Dawson in 1783. I always associated the name with a bathing aid. In fact the
origin of the name is the City of Bath, the inventor’s home town. Dawson’s
chair was of a three wheeled design, with a reclined seat in basket weave. Bath
Chairs can often be seen in stately homes whose wealthy occupants could afford
such an aid to mobility and of course had someone from ‘below stairs’ to push
them around the estate.
There
is a difference between a transport chair and a wheel chair. A transport chair,
often used in hospitals, has to be pushed. A wheel chair is self-propelled by
the user, usually by means of a frame around the large side wheels.
The
first lightweight, folding wheel chair was probably the 1933 invention of an
engineer, Henry Jennings. He designed the chair for the use of a friend,
Herbert Everest, a paraplegic. The road to mass production was to follow when
the two men founded a manufacturing company of Everest and Jennings.
It
is the case that trade names can become a generic name for a particular
product. You don’t vacuum cleaner the carpet, you hoover it, (using a Dyson or
Electrolux probably) You don’t ask to borrow a bic or a parker, you ask for a
biro. No doubt when facing the tiresome task of wrapping Christmas parcels you
look for the cello tape, not a roll of transparent sticky tape perhaps really
called Scotch Tape.
A
few years ago, a teacher friend of mine took up an exchange post in a junior
school in Australia. He expected a change of culture of course, but he was
taken aback when a squabble broke out between two young boys, barely eight
years of age.
“What is this all about?” he asked as he
parted the warring parties.
“Charlie started it Sir, he’s pinched my
Durex.”
He
understood that kids grew up quickly on a good diet and warm Australian
sunshine, but such a level of child development came as a shock. He voiced his
concern to a colleague only to be assured that Durex was a generic Australian
name for sticky tape!
Such
product names becoming generic also applies to walking aids. People refer to a
Zimmer, regardless of manufacturer.
The
Zimmer Frame was probably the idea of the idea of one Andrejz Muiza, a Latvian
who moved to the United States after World war Two. In the UK a walking frame
was first filed at the Patent Office in August 1949.
In
the USA in the 1950’s, a patent was filed by William Cribbs Robb who hailed
from Stretford in Manchester UK. This was followed in 1970 by a later design
from Alfred A Smith. The design was taken up by the
Zimmer Corporation in
Warsaw Indiana. The company was created in 1927 by Alfred O Zimmer. In 2009,
the corporation reported a staggering turnover of $4.095 billion. It employs
8,200 people, 49000 being in the United States, and 3,300 mainly in Europe and
Japan and now specialises in orthopedic joint replacements.
The
evolution of disability living aids has a long and varied history of helping to
overcome physical difficulties and improving the quality of life for millions
of people world - wide. The 2012 Paralympics displayed not only the courage and
tenacity of disabled people, but was also a showcase and testament to mobility aids technology.
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