Armes and Hands Made by Art: Ambroise Paré's Crafted Bodies

Published in French in 1575 and translated into English in 1634, Ambroise Paré's collected works were a widely used and influential resource for early modern European surgeons. Focussing on two texts from Paré's collected works, in which he discusses monstrous births (congenital disability) and his groundbreaking designs for prosthetic devices, this article examines the evocation of themes of crafting and construction in Paré and his translator's descriptions of disabled bodies, which they depicted as communicative forms expressing divine judgement, warnings and identity according to the intentional shaping of the crafter. Disabled bodies were subject to constant interpretation, defined by processes of formation and reformation, and understood through an analogical framework in which materials such as fabric, metal and wax were proxies for flesh. This framework is apparent in the language and imagery used in Paré's descriptions of monstrous births as divine portents, his instructions for the production and application of prosthetic devices by physicians and in his accounts of faked injuries and disabilities by beggars. I propose Paré's work as a valuable resource for early modern disability studies and as a source of insight into the historical cultural contexts of disabled identities and their representation in medical writing.