There were no wheelchairs in the Middle Ages, one or at most two exceptions ratifying this rule. At first sight this bland statement fits the stereotype and prejudice of the "Dark Ages", whose denizens, unlike our modern enlightened promoters of equity, couldn't give a hoot about their mobility impaired compatriots. The dominant story goes that if anything, disabled people were literally pushed around, preferably in a lowly peasant-like tool such as the wheelbarrow pictured above.
In my previous incarnation as an academic specialising in the cultural history of the Middle Ages I used to try and explain to anyone who cared to listen (which tended to be a select few at those lesser-frequented conferences reserved for niche subjects like medieval medicine) that there were no medieval wheelchairs. BUT: This was not because medieval people were too primitive to be able to build them, or didn't care about the quality of life for disabled folk, but because they had the common sense back then not to waste time, effort and resources on things whose impracticability far outweighed any ideological good intentions.
Why wheelchairs? Since I was researching the history of disabled persons in the Middle Ages, I could not help but make reference to the modern day ubiquitous symbol for "disability" - or at least as it was until a few years ago when the Big Bang of Intersectionality blew apart any pretence at such old-fashioned concepts as solidarity among the "the disabled", or group cohesion that might allow common cause in the striving for better lives for all, instead splintering into a multiverse of individuated, specific, solipsistic personal disabilities. But I am among the unreconstructed dinosaurs, so wheelchairs it shall be to represent the image of "disability".
Our contemporary human-built environment abounds with wheelchair imagery, or wheelchair infrastructure. We have disabled-usable toilets designated by the wheelchair sign, we have reserved parking spaces for those with a wheelchair-emblazoned authorisation, we have wheelchair ramps to access buildings and spaces. Even our so-called "natural heritage" sometimes considers the wheelchair, as when hiking trails are labelled "wheelchair friendly" or have a low gradient, or organisations like Parcs Canada construct boardwalks to level out rough terrain. The more wheelchair-accessible a place is, the more we applaud ourselves for our inclusivity and exercise of social justice.
So if the wheelchair is the symbol of disability, and wheelchair accessibility is the measure of desirable social attitudes, then the Middle Ages must fail spectacularly on all counts. Or do they?
Although the history and development of wheelchairs as a mobility aid is a fascinating topic in its own right, to me anyway, I'll cut the story short and present straight away Exhibit A: the one and only true wheelchair of the medieval period. A closer look at this object will clarify the context.
An intriguing mobility device is mentioned by a medieval source in connection with one of the popes. This was Pope Honorius IV who had severe gout and was already very old when he came to office in 1285. He could only celebrate mass with the aid of a special chair made for him, which contemporary accounts described in Latin: ‘Cui pedum ac manuum fere ossa abstulerat artetica aegritudo; unde sedendo in sella, ad hoc artificiose facta missarum solemnia celebravit’ (‘the gouty sickness had taken away almost all the bones of his feet and hands; whence he was sitting in a chair, which was artificed thus that he solemnly celebrated the Mass’). Some scholars are of the opinion that this sounds very much like a modern Zimmer frame, but, since a Zimmer frame is nothing like a chair, and does not allow the user to sit down, this is unlikely. Personally, I think this is the closest candidate we have for a medieval wheelchair, since a wheeled chair, with its fluid movement, would have allowed Honorius IV to move around ‘solemnia’ (solemnly) during Mass.
Constructing a wheelchair out of wood and metal like the modern contraption would certainly not have been beyond the technical means of the later thirteenth century, which had sophisticated mechanical devices like wind and water mills, hence the question arises of why such chairs were apparently not made beyond this one, lonely example. The answer must lie with suitability and infrastructure. Wheelchairs of the modern variety require a flat, level surface to be practical. In the absence of such surfaces in the streets, tracks and roads of medieval Europe, a wheelchair would simply have been no use. The interior of St Peter’s basilica in Rome, where Honorius IV officiated, would of course have had level paving, but outside of this edifice even he must have relied on other mobility aids, such as servants to carry him in a sedan chair or litter.
The point of this historical anecdote is simply that no matter how great an idea or invention, it has to be practicable. The pope's wheelchair was eminently useable only in a very limited environment. Perhaps other, lesser folk lost to history and hence nameless, also had wheelchairs, in a monastery perhaps, or a manor house, anywhere with the infrastructure, that is a flat, level surface, where such a mobility aid could actually have been used in practice.
But areas with such level surfaces were few and far between in medieval Europe. If there was paving, in the wealthier towns, it was cobbles. Anyone who has ridden a bicycle through an historic old town will know how unsuitable cobbled streets are for wheeled vehicles. And even these were a rare luxury. Could the medieval equivalent of town planners have remedied the situation? Theoretically yes, of course, since technically it would easily have been within the ability of medieval people to create wheelchair-friendly spaces. But why should they? Horses, carts, wagons and able-bodied pedestrians could use the existing roads, so why make a lot of effort, when materials were extremely expensive and resources precious (even if labour was cheap). Instead, precisely because labour was cheap, the pragmatic medieval approach was to to use people (servants and other helpers) to help disabled people around. They had better things to spend their time, efforts and skills on than to level roads for a few wheelchairs. They built municipal water supplies that still work today, soaring cathedrals, and gave us inventions we still use, like books, banks and buttons - the eponymous title of a wonderful book by Chiara Frugoni.
So the Middle Ages were not uninventive, or technically backward. Far from it, they appear to have been far more pragmatic than we are today. Just because a piece of technology exists does not mean it is usable or practical, or even desirable.
And so we come to EVs (electric vehicles). Like the medieval wheelchair, a contraption that was technically possible but eminently impractical, EVs are an invention without an infrastructure, for now anyway. EVs present a promise without substance.
The technology for EVs is obviously there, and working. I am not a Tesla-denier, after all. No, it is the promise, the sales pitch, the greener-than-thou holiness of environmental sustainability promoted by EVs that belies their hypocrisy. No doubt my esteemed readers are aware of the problem, so I shall be brief: of course EVs don't emit pollutants or climate-damaging carbon as such while they are running, but their embodied energy (as it is termed for the energy consumption of buildings) is astronomical. What constantly gets me is the inability of people to see that net zero, let alone absolute zero, is not reducing overall energy or even carbon usage, but is simply displacing the problem. Even if all electricity used by EVs were to be generated by renewables (wind, water, solar), the equipment needed to capture such energy (PV panels, wind turbine blades, never mind the infamous lithium batteries) is so resource intensive in its production as to cancel out any carbon offset. And environmentally damaging, as in the case of lithium mining, which requires so much earth-moving equipment to produce enough lithium for one battery that it takes tens of thousands of litres of diesel to power the machinery as to make a complete mockery of the whole EV concept.
The irony so sadly lost on the planet-saving driver of an EV is beautifully exemplified in this photo here, taken at an aire (service station) along the A75 motorway in the south of France this March. A dozen brand spanking new EV charging stations adorn the revamped services. They are of course provided with electricity, powered by that fossil-fuel carbon-spewing monster on the right: a massive diesel generator.
The only truly carbon neutral wind harvesting energy generator would be a medieval style windmill constructed of wood, which supplied energy for immediate usage rather than storage. But who am I to know, I’m just a historian, not an environmental “expert”. Meanwhile people mock the Middle Ages for being "backward", when in fact our medieval ancestors had far more common sense than to widely use a technology - the wheelchair - that they may have had but which lacked a sustainable infrastructure. When we have truly renewable, non-polluting electricity, EVs will make sense. At the moment they are a greenwash.
Perfect phrase: displacing the problem
When I saw the title of this post, my first thought was "mud".
OK, off topic. After a conversation yesterday about making mead, I looked up some instructions which seemed very fiddly and technologically-oriented. Your wheelchair article inspired a search for how medieval people managed their fermentations with more primitive technology. This article about traditional bochet elicited an immediate desire to try it, unlike the modern recipes. "The Quest to Recreate a Lost and ‘Terrifying’ Medieval Mead" https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-make-medieval-mead-bochet
This recipe comes from a ~13th-century publication you're no doubt familiar with, The Good Wife's Guide (Le Ménagier de Paris) https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801462115/the-good-wifes-guide-le-menagier-de-paris/#bookTabs=1