Visible severe disability saturated preindustrial city streets

Evidence

The maimed, the lame, the feeble-minded, the blind, the scarred, and the diseased were also present to a degree incomprehensible to a modern Westerner.l2 The Charles-Picards write of the bone defects still visible in the skeletal remains of the citizens of Carthage (1961:155-56). Runciman tells us of the great number of “mutilated men to be seen in the streets” of tenth and eleventh century Constantinople (1952:77-78). In twelfth century London and Paris “the diseased and handicapped people were in evidence everywhere” (Holmes, 1966:227). Given the state of medical knowledge, given the generally unsanitary conditions of urban settlements, given the prevalence of mutilation as a punishment for even minor infractions, given the lack of hospitals and other welfare institutions, and given the rough character of much everyday sport, we should perhaps not be surprised at such widespread suffering, so visibly displayed. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 221

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the defining visibility of suffering as a structural feature of preindustrial public space, a key contrast for the modern anonymity thesis.
• XREF: Contrasts strongly with the modern urban stranger’s blasé detachment in Simmel — preindustrial streets forced constant raw encounter with suffering.