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This belief that the physically deformed are spiritually unfit has left its trace in the Hebrew scripture. Moses decreed that a man blind, lame, brokenfooted, broken-handed, "crooktbackt," or dwarfed should not make offering to the Lord lest the sanctuary be profaned. The Greeks, worshipping perfection in bodily form, looked upon the cripple as the incarnation of everything unlovely, not only physically but mentally and morally as well. Thersites is described by Homer as possessed of every ugly attribute, deformed equally in body and mind.

The history of the social attitude toward the cripple is bound up with the history of the development of charity. The literature of antiquity is rife with references to beggars and beggary; to give alms was held to be a kind of obligation, more or less automatically performed. With its performance, all social obligation was fulfilled. As a result of this attitude, kindly references to the cripple are rare in ancient literature. Job recites as one of his benevolences that he was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. In one of the sacred books of the East it is stated that the inheritance share of a son crippled in both feet or maimed in both hands should be twice the share of one who is sound.

The most highly developed civilization of antiquity, that of Athens, provided a system of relief for those of its citizens who were unable to earn a livelihood on account of bodily defects and infirmities. The qualification was a property test: it had to be proven that the applicant had no property in excess of three minae (about $100 in present purchase values). The senate examined the case, the ecclesia awarded the bounty, which was one or two obols a day -- enough for a bare sustenance.

The advent of Christianity struck a new note in the attitude toward the crippled and the deformed. Even in Isaiah's prophecy of the coming of the Messianic kingdom, he foretells that "then shall the lame man leap as a hart." Christ, referring to his ministry, says: "The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk." It is also related that the blind and the lame "came to Him in the temple and He healed them."

Many cures of cripples are attributed to the Apostles. "A certain man lame from his mother's womb" was healed by Peter. It is related that "immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength." During the ministry of Philip "many taken with palsies and that were lame, were healed." During the mission of the Apostle Paul to Lycaonia, he healed a cripple described as follows: "And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb, who had never walked."

For all that it represented a distinct step forward, the new influence was not profound. The Christian Councils did their best to combat the ancient custom of exposing or abandoning deformed infants; but, despite their efforts and the laws of the Christian Emperors -- Constantine, Valentinian, Justinian -- the custom survived. Gradually, by way of humanizing this practice, the institution known as the "turning slide" became a feature of church doors; the deformed foundlings thus received were taken care of in creches, hospitals, asylums, refuges for the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the defective. In 590 A. D., St. Gregory reformed the administration of the church and of charity in the city of Rome in an elaborate manner; one of his provisions was that the sick and the infirm were to be superintended by persons appointed to inspect every street. But the recognized mode of providing for the disabled remained in general what it had been in antiquity -- almsgiving in response to begging. In Constantinople pauperism became so extreme during the fourth century that the Emperor Constantine decreed that all able-bodied beggars were to be condemned to slavery; the inference that beggary was to be reserved for the disabled is quite apparent. In Queen Elizabeth's day, more than a thousand years later, we meet the phrase "sturdy beggars" with a similar implication. Between these dates we have Charlemagne's order that no one was to presume to give relief to able-bodied beggars unless they were set to work.

In all justice to the Middle Ages it must be pointed out, however, that casual almsgiving was not the sole relief provided. The church was actively engaged in relief work, at first on a parochial basis, then on an institutional. Side by side with the centers established in the monasteries, there grew up a system of endowed charities, also under church rule, for the care of the "poor" and the "sick" and others in need of aid; it is fair to assume that the crippled and the deformed were included in these categories, although specific mention of them rarely occurs. Thus, along with other hospitals established at Canterbury in England during the twelfth century, there was one for "poor, infirm, lame and blind old men and women." That all these institutions provided relief of the most primitive kind only need not be emphasized.