Patients with Williams-Beuren Syndrome (WBS, also known as Williams Syndrome) show many problems in motor activities requiring visuo-motor integration, such as walking stairs. We tested to what extent these problems might be related to a deficit in the perception of visual depth or to problems in using this information in guiding movements. Monocular and binocular visual depth perception was tested in 33 patients with WBS. Furthermore, hand movements to a target were recorded in conditions with and without visual feedback of the position of the hand. The WBS group was compared to a group of control subjects. The WBS patients were able to perceive monocular depth cues that require global processing, but about 49% failed to show stereopsis. On average, patients with WBS moved their hand too far when no visual feedback on hand position was given. This was not so when they could see their hand. Patients with WBS are able to derive depth from complex spatial relationships between objects. However, they seem to be impaired in using depth information for guiding their movements when deprived of visual feedback. We conclude that the problems that WBS patients have with tasks such as descending stairs are not due to an inability to judge distance.

In this paper, we describe palaeoproteomic evidence obtained from a stained medieval birth girdle using a previously developed dry non-invasive sampling technique. The parchment birth girdle studied (Wellcome Collection Western MS. 632) was made in England in the late fifteenth century and was thought to be used by pregnant women while giving birth. We were able to extract both human and non-human peptides from the manuscript, including evidence for the use of honey, cereals, ovicaprine milk and legumes. In addition, a large number of human peptides were detected on the birth roll, many of which are found in cervico-vaginal fluid. This suggests that the birth roll was actively used during childbirth. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to extract and analyse non-collagenous peptides from a birth girdle using this sampling method and demonstrates the potential of this type of analysis for stained manuscripts, providing direct biomolecular evidence for active use.

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Responses to leprosy in medieval Western Europe were complex and often contradictory. Recent scholarship has challenged the predominant earlier view that lepers were excluded and stigmatized, suggesting instead that lepers were believed to have been chosen by God to be redeemed, and were thus the objects of sympathy and compassion. Research in the fields of history, archaeology and literature has addressed the social and religious status of lepers, the clinical identity and prevalence of medieval leprosy, and the medieval medical understanding of the disease. Much research has also focused on the endowment and functioning of leper hospitals (leprosaria). Although these institutions were situated outside towns and cities, they were still connected to mainstream society as a key focus of charity. The study of leprosy in the Middle Ages has been a vibrant field of scholarship in recent years -yet much still remains to be discovered about medieval lepers, leprosy and leprosaria. The field would benefit from studies comparing the situation of lepers in different regions, and from greater consideration of leprosy in its broader cultural, political, iconographic and ethical context. Such work would contribute not only to our understanding of leprosy, but also to the wider social, medical and religious history of the medieval West.