Medicine during the Middle Ages had a slow advance, sometimes based on divinatory arts and superstitions, so concoctions and even ointments of unusual ingredients were part of the common treatments. Religion played a central role in the diagnosis and possible cure so that sometimes it was believed that diseases could be either some kind of divine punishment or, on the other hand, a work of evil.
This last designation, that of the work of evil, became the most atrocious because it caused the marginalization of people, as well as their abandonment, which in turn was transformed into the growth of people begging for money and living in deplorable hygienic conditions, even for their time.
The idea of “monstrosity” went hand in hand with a strong dehumanization of all misunderstood sick people and their bodies. For example, any type of disability provoked social rejection, whether demonstrated through fear or ridicule, and there were even efforts to hide such people. This type of thinking is not exclusive to the Middle Ages, as in early cultures like in Ancient Greece it was common for newborns with deformities to be killed, and today it is still common for them to be made invisible.
Thus, genetic disorders affecting the population such as dwarfism, Down syndrome, or Huntington’s disease (which involves the deterioration of neurons causing uncontrollable spasms, as well as the loss of mental faculties), to mention a few, when no obvious reason was found, were a reason for rejection and dehumanization.
During this time and later towards the XVII century, it was possible to find people with dwarfism or some type of malformation acting as entertainment, either as court jesters or as objects of mockery and harassment.
Other highly contagious diseases such as plague could cause blisters or other marks on the skin in the absence of treatment tried to be solved by confining the sick. Lepers had the same fate, and there are even records in which it is said that they had to wear some kind of bell to warn of their presence.
In other words, any disease that had an obvious physical manifestation was reason enough to be called not only monstrous, but grotesque, and to carry with it a strong social stigma that often left patients in conditions of abandonment, poverty, and hunger. Conditions continued until the development of the correct antibiotics that allowed them to be treated or science advanced to be able to explain what was happening to them.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
