Preliminary Programme

Experiences of mental disorder at sea were fundamentally shaped by the maritime environment and the contingencies of sea-service. Sailors were globally mobile but also paradoxically confined to the tight space of the ship and the systems of social control required to safely sail it. Ships' surgeons widely attributed episodes of derangement to factors caused by the ship’s mobility, such as the movement between hot and cold climates, or the exposure to sunstroke, scurvy and nostalgia. This same mobility removed sailors from the kinship networks many early modern sufferers of mental disorder relied upon for care outside the asylum, while the tight space of ship caused many surgeons to remove or restrain those they considered to be insane because they feared they would disrupt the ship or endanger the crew.

However, mental disturbance was also a widely accepted part of life at sea. Many sailors' would encounter or experience some form of disturbance during their sea-service and the same conditions which could isolate sufferers also created close-knit shipboard communities, where messmates cared for one another especially in times of mental and emotional distress. Some of those who suffered from frequent periods of mental derangement were cared for by their messmates for years before they came to attention of their surgeon or officers. These contingencies created a maritime culture of expediency but also of tolerance, sympathy and care, which, in some ways, distinguishes the experiences of mental disorder at sea from those ashore.

This paper uses records from across the global extent of the British Royal Navy as a case study to explore how the physical environment of the ship and sea shaped sailors' experiences of mental disorder and the treatment of early modern mental illness outside the asylum. (Show less)

This paper discusses the lived experience, and public perception, of those described as ‘idiots’ in the eighteenth century. Trial records of ‘idiot’ defendants at the Old Bailey criminal court reveal the rhetoric used to describe them by judges, juries, witnesses, family, friends and sometimes even victims. This suggests that the eighteenth century was largely an inclusive and tolerant era for those deemed to be mentally dull, reflected in the high level of mercy and acquittals for such defendants. Such attitudes were reflected in other arenas such as the mass outdoor sermons preached by Methodists and evangelicals, in caricature, and in novels and cheap fiction. These sources also tell us something about the lives people led, their families, their work, and how they were perceived by those around them. They offer important insights into a form of natural social inclusion that preceded the asylum era of the nineteenth century. (Show less)

Disability and sanctity have always been inherently connected. Saints themselves are often portrayed as sufferers, especially from the late Middle Ages onwards, when imitatio Christi became one of the key elements of holiness. Furthermore, since late antiquity, the most often recorded miracles have been cures of various long- and short-term conditions. During the Renaissance and early modern period, the amount of miracle narratives written and published and images portraying saints and their deeds increased, even compared with the medieval period. Suffering and healed human body continued to be in focus of these narrations and of the devotional life around individual saints.

This paper examines the role of disability in the lives of devotional communities venerating different saints in early modern central and northern Italy, with canonization process records and miracle collections as the primary source material. The main focus will be on the interplay between communal religious life and the post-Tridentine ideals about sainthood, the miraculous, and the human body. What kind of a role did disability play in the veneration of saints, and is there a detectable change from the late medieval period? How did the practices and ideas of a devotional community shape the lived experience of its disabled members? (Show less)

Several studies in the fields of history of madness and disability history have shown that scholarly medicine, doctors and other medical professionals and institutions were not very significant in the everyday lives of those with mental illnesses and disabilities in early modern Europe. Only a fraction of the mentally ill could be confined into the few and relatively small hospitals or had the means to seek counsel from doctors or apothecaries. Like elsewhere, in early modern Sweden and Finland the vast majority of the ‘insane’ lived at home or within their local village communities where the main providers of mental health care were the kin, friends, clergymen and folk healers or cunning folk. These ‘lay’ forms of care, folk medicine and religious therapies shaped the lives and experiences of those deemed treatable or actively seeking aid and cure for their mental conditions.
This paper examines the treatments and care provided for the mentally disordered or disabled in the rural local communities, parishes and village environments of early modern Sweden and Finland, with a focus on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The material consists of lower court records and other judicial documents, journals and medical treatises that include descriptions of the communal and lay care and healing of the insane as well as printed lay advice- and guidebooks intended for peasant households. The paper highlights the important role of spiritual and pastoral care and the involvement of several actors in the care and healing in the local scene; the practices not only influenced the everyday lives of the insane but also shaped the communal experiences and living. (Show less)

Deaf men and women occupied an ambiguous place in Early Modern Europe. The Pauline maxims that ‘faith comes by hearing’ and ‘with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’ seemed to disbar deaf men and women from the saving grace of God. Yet in reality the situation was more complex. Lutheran, Catholic and Calvinist churches all devised ways for deaf men and women, including those without speech, to participate in religious services. This paper will explore what these interventions reveal about contemporary views about disability, impairment and the role of the senses in religious knowledge.

This paper also examines the status of deaf people - particularly the pre-lingually deaf - in Early Modern England, using legal documents and parish records to explore their lived experiences. It also explores the codification of a language of hand gestures, or a sign language, as a way to speak to people who were deaf and hard of hearing. This grew out of a renewed interest in sermons and rhetoric and reflects the number of people who needed help to ‘hear’ in the largely oral world of Early Modern England.

This paper recovers the lives of a largely silent minority, and uses contemporary debates about the nature of language, spiritual impairment and salvation to explore how Early Modern men and women understood disability and dealt with deafness and hearing loss. (Show less)