It’s not all about being Disabled. We must remember that each person so categorised has a degree of Ability. Arthur Bell briefly profiles ten people of genius and determination who overcame severe Disabilities to achieve great things. These Able and quite different sufferers are giants of the human race, and have contributed hugely to our world.
Julius Caesar (100 – 44 BC)
As a young man North African pirates kidnapped Caesar, who had suffered epilepsy since childhood. When no ransom money came to release him he escaped, and some years later returned to his captors, with a troop of soldiers. The pirates didn’t escape. Rising through the political ranks as a superb orator, in 59BC he became Consul then a general of brilliance, one of the greatest in history. He helped build the Roman Empire by conquering Gaul, and in 54 BC invaded Britain, but did not stay to enforce Roman ways. Back in Rome he became dictator before being assassinated by jealous fellow politicians plunging knives into his back.
John Milton (1608 – 1674)
One of England’s greatest poets, a revolutionary republican who wrote “Paradise Lost” in 1665 and “Paradise Regained”, suffered blindness. The vast classical knowledge, biblical understanding, and English language he knew were put to wonderful use. Too few today could understand his amazing verse, as modern teaching of English has moved onwards and upwards, to embrace “East Enders”.
Admiral Lord Nelson (1758 – 1805)
Horatio Nelson from Norfolk went from midshipman to Admiral of the Fleet, and Britain’s greatest naval hero. He lost his right eye in battle in 1794 and two years later his right arm. Despite these drawbacks, and suffering what we now call “phantom pains”, his strategic and tactical genius was put to the final test of sea battle at Trafalgar, just off Southern Spain. Fatally wounded, he lived long enough to know his ships had destroyed the French navy of dictator Bonaparte, and ended any chance of an invasion of Britain.
Lord Byron (1788 -1823)
“Mad bad and dangerous to know” was Lady Caroline Lamb’s view of George Gordon, Lord Byron. He was a radical and revolutionary romantic poet, whose masterpieces include the humorous “Don Juan” and the sombre “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”. Born with a club-foot, and mocked at school, he crusaded for both political and moral freedom. Under the belief he could help liberate Greece, the home of democracy from Ottoman Turkish military rule, aged thirty-five years, he died of fever on his way there.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
Despite the steady erosion of his hearing, ending in stone deafness, the Bonn born German composer reached extraordinary heights of artistry. Probably only Johan Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart match him. Never to have heard his huge 9th symphony is akin to Shakespeare not seeing Hamlet, or Leonardo his Mona Lisa. No wonder he became a ‘grumpy old man’ whilst quite young.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)
“Treasure Island”, “Kidnapped”, “Dr Jeykll and Mr Hyde” are but a fraction of the works of Edinburgh’s greatest ever writer. Stevenson, who gave up his training as an engineer, after studying law, was crippled with chronic bronchial and lung problems from early childhood. Seeking a dry climate for his condition he first settled in California, then sailed for Samoa in the South Pacific. He died there, but was revered by the populace as ‘Tusitala’ – the teller of tales.
Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)
“The Lady with the lamp”, who started in the battlefields of Crimea and their bloody hospitals, went on through much campaigning, to found the modern profession of nursing; and radically altered hospital design. It has been recently discovered she was a sufferer from bi-polar disorder (or manic depression). A new study finds that 60% of modern British employers would not employ someone with mental health problems, so Miss Nightingale might have had difficulty getting into today’s healthcare system!
Frederick Delano Roosevelt (1882 – 1945)
Elected four times as President of The United States, ‘FDR’ helped drag them out of the deep ‘Depression’ of the 1930s, and brought them into World War II. Without his leadership it would have been almost impossible to defeat Nazi German and Imperial Japanese fascism. Polio stricken as a young man, and ever after in a wheelchair, it is alleged he had his secret servicemen lift him into bed – with his mistress. To FDR, as much as to Winston Churchill a (serious sufferer from depression), we owe our freedom. He died only three weeks before the Nazis surrendered.
Kathleen Ferrier (1912 – 1953)
A Danish music critic recently remarked that of all the 20thC’s greatest classical performers “Klever Kaff”, as her young sister called her, would be the longest remembered. Going from headlines like “Local typist wins singing competition”, to star of the world’s great concert halls and opera houses, happened within a very few years. She suffered dreadfully from cancer, and whilst on stage at Covent Garden in scene 2 of an opera, she felt a bone in her leg snap. She hung on, standing, to the scenery and the other performers all moved around her, singing until the end. Then she was stretchered off to hospital, from which she never re-emerged. Thankfully through recordings her heavenly voice will live on.
Stephen Hawking (b. 1942)
Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are two of the genius physicists to whom this Cambridge professor is compared. Author of the huge selling “A Brief History of Time” he is one of the world’s best-known sufferers of a disability. With his tinny computerised ‘voice’, and his hi-tech wheelchair, this MND patient has done more than anyone to inspire young people to study science. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1989.
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The report mentioned in Florence Nightingale also queried whether Abraham Lincoln as well as Churchill, would have been elected to the highest offices today, because of their mental health histories. Is it not time for a serious rethink of our disablist attitudes? Readers who are particularly concerned with mental health discrimination in the UK should visit: www.mind.org.uk/timetochange
Just wanted to give you a shout from the valley of the sun, great information. Much appreciated.