Fools and idiots?

This is the first book devoted to the cultural history in the pre-modern period of people we now describe as having learning disabilities. Using an interdisciplinary approach including historical semantics medicine natural philosophy and law it considers a neglected field of social and medical history and makes an original contribution to the problem of a shifting concept such as 'idiocy'. Medieval physicians lawyers and the schoolmen of the emerging universities wrote the texts which shaped medieval definitions of intellectual ability and its counterpart disability. In studying such texts which form part of our contemporary scientific and cultural heritage we gain a better understanding of which people were considered to be intellectually disabled and how their participation and inclusion in society differed from the situation today.