As Western medicine emerges and doctors gain social prestige and power–particularly in the eyes of the elite–a medical model of disability also emerges. Within the medical model, physicians focus on the biology of a person, making a diagnosis about that biology (in particular, assessing a person's body against a "normative" baseline), and then suggesting treatment based on that diagnosis. This model especially focuses on the idea of "cure," meaning that with the right "treatment" a disability can disappear–implying that what is necessary is a body without disabilities.

This medical model will remain present throughout medical sectors to this day, even after it is first named and critiqued in the 1950s by psychiatrist Thomas Sasz - and, for much longer before that, by people living with disabilities.