Codifying clumsiness: Tracing the origins of dyspraxia through a transatlantic constellation of mobility (1866–1948)

Dyspraxia affects up to five percent of the population, but its history and its historical geographies have gone unexplored. This article offers the first historical geography of dyspraxia, conceptualising its emergence in the transatlantic world through a ‘constellation of mobility’. It explores the major episodes in dyspraxia's early history (1866–1948) – from the Victorian science of apraxia in Europe that set the context for its identification through to the research of the American neuropathologist Samuel T. Orton, who in the 1920s laid out one of the first modern understandings of the condition. Through this case study, this article seeks to further redress twin research lacunae: historical geographies of psychological differences beyond those of madness and mental illness, including those not straightforwardly captured by the mental/physical binary; and mobility geographies of impairments that precipitate immobility and/or non-standard types of movement. It argues that mobility approaches hold substantial promise for the further exploration of historical geographies of dyspraxia and of disability more broadly, especially through their ability to connect the multiple scales – from embodied differences to global networks of medicine and science – that produce particular medical diagnoses.