Pain’s associations with disability as it is experienced, imagined, and beheld are multiple and long-standing. People with disabilities have habitually been imagined as “suffering from” impairment and “afflicted by” disability, the diction suggesting both physical and psychic pain. The nuances and complex consequences of this conceptualization of disability are dynamic throughout various time periods. Pain has its etymological roots in words from Indo-European, ancient Greek, and classical Latin signifiying penality (such as Latin _poena_), punishment, and revenge (i.e., ancient Greek ποινή or blood money). In the fourth century, words for pain acquired the meanings of suffering and affliction, in effect shifting the focus from the purpose of pain to the experience of pain (_Oxford English Dictionary_). Pain is regularly theorized as an experience that isolates and individualizes. The difficulty of empathizing with another’s pain can become hostility toward the person in pain. Adam Smith’s _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ (1759) articulates such a social dynamic by arguing that “though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers.” Sophocles’s play _Philoctetes_ (ca. 409 BCE) is a touchstone for Smith as well as for later works...