Early Institutions for the Visually Impaired — Quinze-Vingts, Paris
The earliest documentation regarding the perceptions of visually impaired people date back to 1260. One of the first formal institutions for the blind was established by the French King Louis the IX after he returned from the Sixth Crusade.
Having suffered a devastating defeat in the Crusade, Louis returned to Paris believing that God was trying to teach him a lesson in humility. Being a deeply religious man, this drove him to intensify his interest in charity work. And thus, the “Quinze-Vingts” institution was established. Quinze-Vingts, meaning 300 in English, was popularized to have been in reference to its first inhabitants: 300 blind French knights who had lost their vision as a punishment during the crusade. However, the story turned out to be fabricated and was simply in reference to the number of beds in the facility.
The institution had a rather unorthodox approach to empowering the visually impaired. The inhabitants of The Quinze-Vingts were licensed as beggars in uniform. Although the individuals were allowed to keep the money earned from their begging, they had to give a portion of their belongings to the institution upon their deaths. Since braille had not yet been developed at the time, creative methods such as pinpricks and silk embroidery on cardboard were developed to enable literacy.
In 1779, King Louis the XVI relocated the institution to its current location in Paris and changed the number of beds from 300 to 800. In 1784, Valentin Haüy founded the Institution for the Young Blind at the Quinze-Vingts. The Quinze-Vingts institution later became pivotal in the development of braille when Louis Braille enrolled in its school for the young blind in 1819. To this day, Quinze-Vingts remains as a hospital for visual ailments. It is also the location of the Vision Institution which is an ophthalmology research center that was inaugurated in 2008. The Quinze-Vingts institution later became pivotal in the development of braille when Louis Braille enrolled in its school for the young blind in 1819.
