Man on Crutches

Illustration of a man with crutches in a 15th-century medical manuscript, from John Arderne’s Liber Medicinarum. This illustration is relatively simple but reveals much about how disability was portrayed in the Middle Ages before printing.

Medieval sources of information regarding disability include many medical texts written by hand, as well as religious writings and legal documents. The Medieval Disability Sourcebook examines these many sources and discovers that there was no single Medieval understanding of disability. Instead, some writers concentrated on issues of medical treatment, while others linked disability to religion and still others detailed the impact that disability had on the lives of individuals in legal and financial documents.

In this illustration from a medical manuscript, the man’s disability is clearly portrayed as a physical condition that requires attention. His crutches are the main focus of the image, however, and so the illustration also shows that assistive technology for disabled people and independence for disabled people have a long history.

Information design before printing existed in the form of illustrations, text and organization of information in medieval documents. This graphic communication is used to convey information on the world and can also influence the way disabled individuals are portrayed in society. Comparison of illustrations from medical manuscripts with other medieval documents can reveal how different contexts influence how people with disabilities are perceived.