Amazing People: Dr. John Langdon Down

 

Portrait of John Langdon Down by Sidney Hodges c. 1870

Why does he matter?

Have you ever seen or heard of someone being treated unfairly? Someone perhaps being judged or criticized for something they can’t help? Or being refused opportunities or privileges given to others for reasons that just don’t make sense or seem right?

Ever wonder if anything can possibly be done about it?

There are people throughout history who have decided that there is. These are people who looked injustice straight in the face and said “No. This isn’t okay. I won’t accept it.” They often took great risks and sometimes even came to personal harm to fight for the rights of all people.

And a lot of times, they succeeded.

They didn’t necessarily fix the whole world for all time, but they made strides. They made improvements, and they made a mark that boosted others and changed the way we think forever.

One such person was Dr. John Langdon Down.

Biography:

Field: Medicine

DOB/DOD: November 18, 1828 – October 7, 1896

Place of Birth: Torpoint, United Kingdom

 In the Beginning

The need for Dr. John Langdon Down’s work can be summarized in the name of his first place of employment as a licensed medical doctor: The Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots.

It must be noted that the word ‘idiot’ was not used or meant in the same was that it is today. It was once meant to simply mean uneducated, ignorant, or common. However, even in that context, it wasn’t applied to everyone outside of academia. Largely, it was used to describe anyone with intellectual disabilities or challenges.

However, it still speaks to the world’s view of anyone born with these kinds of challenges.

The way these people have been treated over the centuries has been horrific to say the least. It was once common practice to shuffle them off to institutions for life where they would be abandoned and forgotten by family. Here, the treatment of these people was not good. At Earlswood, Dr. Langdon Down found the patients were crowded 15 to 20 per room. Hygiene was terrible, the patients were denied a long list of things including any kind of education or entertainment, and they were subject to frequent corporal punishment.

 Dr. Down was sensitive to other issues of injustice, as well. When they refused to pay his wife for her work at the asylum, because women were generally not paid at the time, he was not pleased. When the board refused money for an exhibition of his patients’ artwork, he turned in his letter of resignation.

Now was the time, he decided, to open his own institution and do things the right way.

He named it Normansfield after the lawyer who kindly arranged funding to launch the institution. It still stands today in London, although it’s not a hospital anymore. Now it serves as the national office for the Down Syndrome Association and it also houses a museum of learning disability.

Actually, it’s full name was “Normansfield Training Institute for Imbeciles.” Okay, so the vocabulary still needed a bit of work, but at least it was a ‘training institute’ and not just an asylum.

Dr. Down made sure a full and rich program was available for the residents there. They were trained in such vocations as weaving and dancing. They were properly nourished and cared for, and, most importantly, they were treated with dignity and honour.

In an era where people with intellectual disabilities were tossed in hospitals to be forgotten and ignored, Dr. Down provided them with skills, abilities, and a future.

Sadly, the mistreatment of these people was far from over. The Eugenics movement and the concentration camps of World War II brought their own horrors to those with intellectual disabilities, along with policies of forces sterilization and denial of life-saving procedures.

It would be decades after his death that Dr. Down’s name would be immortalized in the name of the condition. He called it Mongolism, due to the shape of a carrier’s skull. It would also be a long time after he was gone that science would discover the extra chromosome that causes the condition.

But clearly, Dr. Down didn’t need any of these honours or scientific explanations to recognize these people as … people. Today, people with Down Syndrome live full lives and enjoy the same freedoms and protection under the law as the rest of the population. More and more are earning university degrees. They work as chefs, teachers, artists, athletes, musicians, and more.

And it all began with Dr. John Langdon Down who was the first to have the courage to stand up and say to the world “No. This isn't right."