Yet even if the reader imagines all these sorts of persons jumbled together, he will still have an incomplete sense of the extent of the mix of persons in the preindustrial city's public space. The maimed, the lame, the feeble-minded, the blind, the scarred, and the diseased were also present to a degree incomprehensible to a modern Westerner. … Given the state of medical knowledge, given the generally unsanitary conditions of urban settlements, given the prevalence of mutilation as a punishment for even minor infractions, given the lack of hospitals and other welfare institutions, and given the rough character of much everyday sport, we should perhaps not be surprised at such widespread suffering, so visibly displayed.

QUESTION: What were the actual prevalence rates of disability and visible impairment in preindustrial cities? Modern demographers could quantify this against an imagined baseline.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 221