From the Dissection Room: Cicatrix from Leg Amputation
The healing stump-end of an amputated leg, c. 1760-93. The new tissue (cicatrix) is nearly formed here, but the muscles surrounding the amputation sore have contracted
In the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Plague and Sacrifice in Eyam Village
Mompesson’s Well (1665). The story of Eyam is not related to the history of surgery per se, but it is related to the history
The Chirurgeon’s Box: The Falciform Amputation Knife
Many keen observers have noted the curved knife pictured at the top of this website and have enquired about this oddly shaped tool. This, dear
‘One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury’: Syphilis and ‘Syphilophobes’ in Early Modern England
Skeleton (c. 18th century) showing signs of advance syphilis. Before the discovery of penicillin in 1928, syphilis was an incurable disease. Its symptoms were as
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!’ A [Very] Brief History of the Caesarean Section
One of the earliest engravings depicting a cesarean section from Seutonis’s The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (1506). It has long been believed that the
The Horrors of War: Gunshot Wounds and the 17th-Century Chirurgeon
Skull [19th century] showing ‘keyhole’ gunshot trauma from The National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington D.C. FROM RICHARD WISEMAN’S TREATISE OF WOUNDS [1672] At