Being disabled in the medieval era

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Welcome back to the HistoryExtra podcast.

Prosthetic legs, wheelbarrow wheelchairs and guide children were just some of the assistive technologies and body augmentations available to our medieval and early modern ancestors. From bionic knights to perspektical monks, Rae Gillibrand, lecturer in inclusive learning at the University of Leeds, highlights how bodily difference was understood in this pre-modern era and explores the medieval marketplace and community support that was available. Speaking to Emily Briffett, Rae reveals a world of ingenuity, adaptation and care.

Emily Briffett (1:11)

I'm so excited to be talking to you today. First and foremost, I think there's a perception that disability technology is something that only really came about after the First World War. Now, I'm curious, what is your opinion on that perception?

Rae Gillibrand (1:27)

You're totally right. Whenever I talk about my work and my research, you get this idea that this is all something that happened at the turn of the 20th century. And before that, it was just awful, life was terrible, there was no assistive technology. I find that when I'm talking to people about my research, you get things like, it was all like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney has a lot to answer for there, or more Disney, or Captain Hook in Peter Pan, it's all this kind of perception. But that's just not true. So actually, there's a really long and rich history of assistive technology in the pre-modern period, which I'm excited to chat through with you today.

Emily Briffett (2:03)

Now, from your awareness, things that you've encountered in your research, how far does this history stretch back? Is there ancient stuff that you might point us to? Obviously, today we're talking about stuff that's slightly later than that.

Rae Gillibrand (2:16)

Absolutely.

My research focuses more or less on the periods from 1400 to 1600 I think about that little gap of time that people often forget about. We've got this situation where historians say that the Middle Ages ended in 1500, and the early modern period started in 1500 But I don't think that people woke up on the 1st of January of 1500 and went, oh, I'm feeling very early modern today. I focus on that little overlap between those two periods. But the history of assistive technology goes back far further. So people have found ancient Egyptian mummies with prosthetic toes. The Etruscans in what would now be Italy were making prosthetic teeth and dentures and that kind of thing. So there's a huge history that goes way, way back beyond the time period that I'm looking at.

Emily Briffett (3:01)

Amazing. Now, as you've said, we're going to be focusing on that very late medieval stroke, very early, early modern. When we're talking about this period, does the definition of disability differ to when we talk about it today?

Rae Gillibrand (3:15)

Yeah. So the language around disability is super interesting. So in this time period, the word disability didn't exist in the way that we would understand it today. So the earliest known use of the word disability in relation to physical impairment is in 1545 So like right at the end of the time period that I'm looking at. And this is in the writing of a guy called Roger Asham. He was an author and a royal tutor and he wrote this book on how to shoot guns. It's called The School of Shooting. And in this book, this is the first written record we have in English. He says, you know, there's this guy who can't learn how to shoot a gun. And he says, it's not due to any disability. It's just due to his unwillingness to learn. So his laziness. And that's the first sense of disability being used in a way to mean physical impairment or bodily difference. But before this, the word disability was far more literal. So it took the literal form of like the prefix dis and the verb able. So when we add dis to a verb, it sort of reverses the meaning. So it meant to like prevent somebody from doing something. And we see this in other words, right, that we're probably more familiar with, like disown or dislike or something like that.