Leprosy as Encyclopaedic Disease

Looking at leprosy in the context of a medieval encyclopaedia shows that its complexity is even greater than scholars have so far articulated. Crucially, this multiplicity passes via ideas about animals, who variously provoke disease and symbolize it across its diverse forms, with health working as an always incomplete statement of human difference from the animal. The animality of disease has been underestimated both in animal studies research and by scholars of leprosy; this article therefore connects animal studies and medical humanities to understand the conceptualization of leprosy in the encyclopaedic Livre des propriétés des choses, where four animals - the elephant, serpent, fox and lion - represent four forms of leprosy. More broadly, leprosy is thread right through the Livre des propriétés, connected to ideas about the soul, elements and humours, as well as to a range of other materials and beings: minerals and metals play a role as potential cures; plants both cause and help treat leprosy. My reading reveals a complex nexus of terminology and associations, and I argue, in dialogue with the arguments of Annemarie Mol, that medieval diagnosis worked by the coordination of myriad signs - especially animals - to produce a patchwork articulation of bodily health.