He does not look overly enthusiastic as I appear down on his trunk , but then again , I doubt anyone would be if they had every imaginable weapon of their age cut , poking , stab , slicing , gouging , ripping , and shattering their body . I say “ and ” here , because this mortal is not being round by just one target that could easy stamp out him , he is being smite with all of them at once and they are leave visible slash , ruptures , and ancestry - gush puncture in his flesh . But again , the individual himself seems disinterested in this dramatic and deadly onslaught . Perhaps it is just another day in his life , the spirit of a medieval Wound Man .
Many features of medication ’s longhistorymay expect strange , baffling , or completely ridiculous to modern observers . From toxicant remediation to fantastical disease , the past can very much feel like a foreign , and decidedly dangerous , land , specially from the Wound Man ’s position . While we may be tempted to give the axe it as simply the product of a “ wild ” age , the Wound Man actually attend to an instructive purpose during its day . To learn more , IFLScience visited the Wellcome Collection , London , where some of the most iconic examples are housed . As it turns out , an judgment of his consistence can tell us much about how contemporaneous the great unwashed understand the organic structure and wound .
The Wound Man in all his g(l)ory
As the above description demonstrates , the Wound Man is a character of medieval surgicaldiagramshowing a typically naked man ( though this is not always the case ) who has various weapon digging and cutting into him . These weapons include everything from clubs and spears to swords , daggers , and arrows . He even appears to have what depend like a piece of sharp stick or antler piercing his foot . always , the Wound Man is depicted with a puzzled or neutral expression on his face , and he is usually collide with a mannerism that shows off the more delicate parting of his consistence , along with the types of holes , cuts , and slash he has sustained .
In addition to the obvious wounds , the man also has some more subtle problems . For representative , there are flushed patches on his legs from louse bites and there are signs that he is visibly unwell too . A heedful review reveal he has raised buboes ( egotistic lymph nodes ) around his groin , as well as swollen glands ( signs of the plague ) . Even his penis has not been part with abide . It appears to have been trim down in one-half , though there is no pedigree , and there is a blue tone to the surrounding flesh . In addition , his left-hand testis has a dappling rule on it , suggesting grounds of a genital disease .
In short , this man ’s soundbox has been afflicted with every conceivable figure of terms , injury , and contagion . And yet he does not suffer . If anything , his face is indifferent to his bodily predicament . And this is in all probability careful , as he is not a symbolization of anguish but one of healing .
The Wound Man appeared within the late medieval period as a way to conceptualize the male body and to visually list all the ways he could be injured.Image credit:Wellcome Collection(CC BY 4.0)
What was the Wound Man for?
The Wound Man first appeared sometime around the15thcenturyin books related to surgery . By display the variety of wounds one may feel in their life , the mental image functioned as a kind of visual table of contents indicating what was to be covered in the book ’s pages .
In some cases , this relationship between figure of speech and text is more obvious than in others , such as in an example that was produced inGermanyaround 1420 . In this early variation of the image , the Wound Man is surrounded by annotations and references that point to his lesion in the same room that the weapons bond into his flesh . These phrases tell the viewer where in the Word they can feel consort treatments for these accidental injury .
As such , the Wound Man is a kind of instructional or exemplifying organic structure that once guided surgeons and doctor . It was a hard-nosed gimmick that aided them in their thinking . But this may not always have been the causa .
Not all Wound Men depicted the same injuries (nor were they all naked), as this one from Germany shows animals assailing the man along with all the usual weapons of war.Image credit: Wellcome Collection viaWikimedia Commons(CC BY 4.0)
For instance , a translation of the Wound Man hold by theWellcome Collectionmay have serve a different purpose . The prototype look in an English manuscript that adapts some of the works of the Roman physician , Galen . The manuscript is small and portable , but attractively ornate with its gold leaf illuminations . The elaborate details make it hard to trust that the object was just a simple text or reference book .
“ [ T]his is quite a sumptuous [ object],”Dr Elma Brenner , Research and Development Lead at the Wellcome Collection , told IFLScience . It has “ relatively few fringy notes … [just ] a few here and there . One might expect more marginal notes if it had been heavy used . ”
At the time when these images were appear across Europe , surgerywas becoming an established medical profession . These now - educated practitioners would have want books to assist them con and communicate their accomplishment . Another significant growth for OR at this sentence was the rise of battleground technologies , which brought with it a diverseness of unexampled , merciless tools for impaling and maiming your enemies . Many of these appear in the Wound Man ’s body .
With all this in mind , if you were a chivalric patient consulting a MD or operating surgeon , you would also bear them to be competent enough on their own .
As Brenner said : “ I would hope that my physician or surgeon fuck all this stuff and nonsense already and did n’t need to keep look in their book . I ’d be a piece worried if they were cheating me . Imagine if they said , ‘ fall on , I ’ve just got to go and check the book ’ . If you go to the GP today , I know they do look thing up , but if they were constantly looking up everything , it would be a bit worrying . ”
So , it is possible that this specific volume was not own as a functioning medical “ guide ” at all , but give its flowery appearance , was more of a status symbol . stimulate the Scripture to reach could send a subject matter to a client that you are educated and capable .
“ It represents your knowledge and your practical acquirement ” , Brenner concluded .
Sickness and healing in medieval culture
By watch the Wound Man and his troth , we also gain a glimpse at how knightly multitude , especially educated physicians and surgeon , remember about injuries and illnesses at this time . For example , some of the wounds depicted on the serviceman ’s afflicted body belong to diseases we may recognize today . As mentioned above , he has swollen glands that argue he has the plague .
For people in this catamenia , disease was thought to be a result of internal processes related to the consistency ’s “ humors ” . These crucial fluid – phlegm , blood line , scandalmongering bile , and black gall – were present at varying levels in everyone . Each personhad their unique levels of each , which made up their “ constitution ” and also influence their personalities . According to this aesculapian view , which was inherited from the Classical period , unwellness was the result of unbalance , when the body contained too much or too little of one or more humors .
But the appearance and paste of the Black Death across Europe in 14thcentury challenged this as it appeared to be something that pass on from someone to person , assault them as if it come from an outside source ( which we now know to be the compositor’s case as plague is get by the bacteriumYersinia pestis ) . As such , it is possible the creators of Wound Men regarded such infection , along with venereal disease , as something similar to a wound .
“ [ P]lague was really classifiable because … it challenged the humoral notion of everything materialise internally . It did n’t fit into those frameworks for think and ultimately it was understand as something external coming from the gentle wind , ” explained Brenner .
As such , the Wound Man ’s body has also become a repository for this type of medical affliction .
But ultimately , the Wound Man is also a testament to the man ’s relationship to expiry and the doubt associated with medical treatments .
“ I opine the picture form of encapsulates an acceptance of the vulnerability of the human eubstance , in a period when so many of the treatments that we take for allow today were just not there . So a simple infection could kill you . ”
The Wound Man is experiencing everything the medieval world had to throw at him , but still , as Brenner pronounce , “ he ’s still standing . ”
And yet , above all , the reliance on the Wound Man also reminds us that the male figure was consider as the model human figure . There are very few examples of female bodies in many medieval aesculapian diagrams . This is because women were visualise as lesser , deviant versions of the idealistic manlike form . When women are represent in these works , they are often pathologized in means male bodies were not . Unfortunately , this meant woman were often invisible in these sources , even if their bodies were just as vulnerable to the horror of the man .
