Although substantial histories of emotional, physical, intellectual, and sensory impairment have proliferated throughout the past century, the historical study of disability as community is a relatively recent endeavor. As these studies have diversified, separate epistemologies that examine disability as a social phenomenon and impairments as a cultural phenomenon have evolved, particularly in English-speaking countries. However, few historical works try to address these separate approaches in a single coherent narrative. In Sight Correction, Mounsey attempts to develop such a narrative by surveying the intellectual and literary understanding of visual impairment as disability in Britain (by which he means Wales, England, and Scotland) during the eighteenth century.
As his analytical method, Mounsey employs a variability approach that examines individuals within a given era, in lieu of, as he argues, an effective cultural model of disability. Importantly, this variability approach is designed to examine closely individuals who inhabited an era and an...