The Center for the History of Medicine has digitized nearly 400 works on the subjects of surgery and the treatment of wounds and injuries as part of our ongoing contributions to the Medical Heritage Library. Two titles of note, both from the Boston Medical Library collection, recently passed through the scanning lab: Addinell Hewson’s 1872 work, Earth as a topical application in surgery, and Thomas Gale’s Certaine workes of chirurgerie (1563).
The arm of a patient 15 days after Hewson amputated his hand.
Hewson, a once noted Philadelphia surgeon, describes in detail his practice of using powdered clay both to pack infected wounds and as a topical, post-surgical application. The idea that introducing “earth” to open wounds might have presented any medical benefit was at odds with what were at the time new and increasingly widely accepted ideas about antiseptics. Interestingly, the successes in accelerating the healing process that he describes in the book have been attributed by at least one modern researcher to the probable presence of naturally-occurring antibacterial agents in the clay that would have been unknown to Hewson at the time, and which preceded breakthroughs in modern antibiotics by nearly 75 years.
Another noteworthy feature of Earth as a topical application is that it contains a striking series of woodburytypes depicting the post-operative state of four patients who Hewson treated. Viewable on pages 45, 51, 112, and 164, these portraits render his patients in an unusually stark and artistic light.
The second title of note, Gale’s Certaine workes of chirurgerie, is the first printed book on
The wound man illustration from Gale's work on surgery.
surgery known to have been both written and published in English, a fact that sets it apart from the many English translations of foreign-language surgical texts from that era. It is a strange and whimsical work, composed in the form of a free-flowing conversation in which Gale discusses various maladies and their most suitable treatments with John Yates and John Feilde. In the course of the dialogues, Gale expounds upon various types of fractures (classifying them at times by their resemblances to the stalks of certain plants and vegetables), provides detailed instructions on the preparation of medicinal salves and unguents, and gives historical perspectives on then-current medical treatments.
A surgeon in the army of Henry VIII, Gale had first-hand knowledge of the traumatic injuries associated with 16th century warfare. Pictured at right, the title page of Certaine workes contains a commonly used thematic illustration that is generally referred to as “wound man.” Serving as a grim reminder of the perils that once faced soldiers of the late medieval and early modern eras, wound man was used in many early medical texts to depict the array of battlefield injuries common at that time. This version of wound man suffers simultaneous arrow-piercings, bones smashed by clubs, truncheons, hammers, and cannon balls; flesh rended by sword slashes and spear wounds, as well as various other grievous and unpleasant injuries.
Related topics:
surgery – wounds and injuries – asepsis and antisepsis in surgery – gunshot wounds
plastic surgery – facial reconstruction – dissection – anatomy – military surgery
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
(Cross-posted from the Center for the History of Medicine blog.)