Abstract
This chapter examines early modern medical treatises on surgery, amputation, and the treatment of combat-related wounds through the lens of disability studies. Although many such texts were intended primarily as reference guides for surgeons, they also provide insight into early modern conceptions of surgery—including amputation—as processes of performative craft. Texts considered include works by Ambrose Paré, Paul Barbette, and John Woodall, paying attention to the ways in which their illustrations often reflected as much fascination with medical “tools of the trade” as the bodies upon which they operated. Medical treatises that dealt with amputation and prosthesis in particular reveal a striking concern for patient welfare and quality of life, contrary to existing narratives surrounding the perceived barbarity of early modern surgery. I also argue, however, that such texts betray problematic tendencies on the part of their authors to fashion themselves as arbiters of cosmetic and disabled difference based on fantasies of bodily restoration. Ultimately, this chapter makes the case for reconsidering these medical texts alongside those in the literary tradition as a means of shedding light on seventeenth-century European conceptions of disability and prosthesis and their implications for veterans in the early modern period.
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Notes
- 1.
The Dream of Saint John Damascene: The Virgin Attaches His Severed Right Hand. Drawing, 16–, 1600, Wellcome Library Collection, https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b16513411#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0.
- 2.
Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1st edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 160.
- 3.
Geoffrey L. Hudson, “Disabled Veterans and the State in Early Modern England,” in Disabled Veterans in History, ed. David Gerber (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 117.
- 4.
See, for example: Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture, Digital Printing (London: Routledge, 2006); and Katharine Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 47.1 (1994): 1–33.
- 5.
William Clowes, A Profitable and Necessarie Booke of Obseruations, for All Those That Are Burned with the Flame of Gun Powder, &c. and Also for Curing of Wounds Made with Musket and Caliuer Shot, and Other Weapons of War Commonly Vsed at This Day Both by Sea and Land, as Heerafter Shall Be Declared: Vvith an Addition of Most Approued Remedies, Gathered for the Good and Comfort of Many, out of Diuers Learned Men Both Old and New Writers: Last of All Is Adioined a Short Treatise, for the Cure of Lues Venerea, by Vnctions and Other Approued Waies of Curing, Heertofore by Me Collected: And Now Againe Newly Corrected and Augmented in the Yeere of Our Lorde 1596. By William Clowes One of Hir Maiesties Chirurgions (Early English Books, 1475–1640 / 193:13. Imprinted at London: By Edm. Bollifant, for Thomas Dawson, 1596).
- 6.
John Woodall, Woodalls Viaticum: The Path-Way to the Surgions Chest Containing Chirurgicall Instrvctions for the Yonger Sort of Surgions Now Imployed in the Service of His Maiestie for the Intended Reliefe of Rochell. And Composed by Iohn Woodall, One of the Present Masters or Governors of the Companie of Barber Surgions London. Intended Chiefly for the Better Curing of Wounds Made by Gun-Shott. Published by Authoritie (Early English Books, 1475–1640 / 1055:10. Imprinted at London: [By J. Dawson], 1628).
- 7.
Wilhelm Fabricius Hildanus, Gulielm, Fabricius Hildamus, His Experiments in Chyrurgerie Concerning Combustions or Burnings Made with Gun Powder, Iron Shot, Hot-Water, Lightning, or Any Other Fiery Matter Whatsoever: In Which Is Excellently Described the Differences, Signs, Prognostication and Cures, of All Accidents and Burning Themselves: Very Necessary and Useful for All Gentlemen, and Soldiers as Well of the Trayned Bands, as Others, Especially upon Sudden Occasions/Translated Out of Latine by Iohn Steer, Chyrurgeon (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 93:12. London: Printed by Barnard Alsop …, 1642).
- 8.
Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 130.
- 9.
William Clowes, A Profitable and Necessarie Booke of Obseruations.
- 10.
John Woodall, Woodalls Viaticum.
- 11.
Lowe, Peter, A Discourse of the Vvhole Art of Chyrurgerie VVherein Is Exactly Set Downe the Definition, Causes, Accidents, Prognostications, and Cures of All Sorts of Diseases, Both in Generall and Particular, Which at Any Time Heretofore Haue Beene Practiced by Any Chyrurgion: According to the Opinion of All the Ancient Professors of That Science. Which Is Not Onely Profitable for Chyrurgions; but Also for All Sorts of People: Both for Preventing of Sicknesse; and Recoverie of Health. Compiled by Peter Lovve Scottishman, Doctor in the Facultie of Chyrurgerie at Paris: And Ordinary Chyrurgion to the French King and Navarre. Whereunto Is Added the Rule of Making Remedies Which Chyrurgions Doe Commonly Use: With the Presages of Divine Hippocrates (Early English Books, 1475–1640 / 845:22. At London: Printed by Thomas Purfoot, An. Dom. 1634).
- 12.
Woodall, Woodalls Viaticum, 6.
- 13.
Ambroise Paré, The Collected Works of Ambroise Paré, Translated Out of the Latin by Thomas Johnson from the First English Edition, London 1634, Pound Ridge (New York: Milford House, Inc., 1968), 883.
- 14.
Paré, The Collected Works of Ambroise Paré, 878.
- 15.
Nor was Paré—immune to his own tendencies toward prosthetic or embodied fetishization. As David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder comment in their reading of Paré’s Des monstres et prodigies (1575), the surgeon often attempted to strike a narrative balance between explication and spectacular indulgence: “In these ‘believe-it-or-not’ presentations, the physician must maintain his professional credibility by establishing his empirical accuracy while simultaneously acting as a witness to the extraordinary tales that give flesh to fantasy.” The seemingly contradictory attitude that Paré adopts is thus telling of the ways in which disabled individuals were often classified using a range of arbitrary criteria, e.g. whether the disability was congenital, physical, injury-based, etc. For more on this subject, see: David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001).
- 16.
Helkiah Crooke, Somatographia Anthropine. Or A Description of the Body of Man With the Practise of Chirurgery, and the Use of Three and Fifty Instruments. By Artificiall Figures Representing the Members, and Fit Termes Expressing the Same. Set Forth Either to Pleasure or to Profit Those Who Are Addicted to This Study, ed. Ambroise Paré (Early English Books, 1475–1640 / 998:13; Early English Books, 1475–1640 / 1360:06. [London]: Printed by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Michael Sparke at the blew Bible in Greene Arbor, 1634).
- 17.
Helkiah Crooke, Somatographia Anthropine, Chapter 1, 4–5.
- 18.
Ibid., Chapters 2, 5.
- 19.
Ibid., Chapters 2, 5.
- 20.
Ibid., Chapters 7, 26.
- 21.
John Childs, The Army of Charles II, Studies in Social History (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 73.
- 22.
Alan J. Thurston, “Paré and Prosthetics: The Early History of Artificial Limbs,” ANZ Journal of Surgery 77.12 (December 1, 2007): 1114, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1445-2197.2007.04330.
- 23.
James Yonge, Currus Triumphalis, È Terebinthô, Or, An Account of the Many Admirable Vertues of Oleum Terebinthinae More Particularly, of the Good Effects Produced by Its Application to Recent Wounds, Especially with Respect to the Hemorrhagies of the Veins, and Arteries, and the No Less Pernicious Weepings of the Nerves, and Lymphaducts: Wherein Also, the Common Methods, and Medicaments, Used to Restrain Hemorrhagies, Are Examined, and Divers of Them Censured: And Lastly, a New Way of Amputation, and a Speedier Convenient Method of Curing Stumps, Than That Commonly Practised, Is with Divers Other Useful Matters Recommended to the Military Chirurgeon, in Two Letters: The One to His Most Honoured, James Pearse, Esq, Chirurgeon to His Royal Highness the Duke of York, and Chirurgeon General to His Majestie’s Navy Royal: The Other, to Mr. Thomas Hobbs, Chirurgeon in London / by James Yonge (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 1113:20. London: Printed for J. Martyn …, 1679., 1679).
- 24.
James Cooke, 1676. Mellificium Chirurgiae, or, The Marrow of Chirurgery Much Enlarged to Which Is Now Added Anatomy, Illustrated with Twelve Brass Cuts, and Also the Marrow of Physick, Both in the Newest Way/by James Cooke … (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 1649:08. London: Printed by J.D. for Benji. Shirley, and are to be sold at his shop …, 1676).
- 25.
James Yonge, Currus Triumphalis,55, 63.
- 26.
Helkiah Crooke, Somatographia Anthropine, Chapters 2, 5.
- 27.
Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 189.
- 28.
See: Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 19; Margaret Pelling, “Occupational Diversity: Barbersurgeons and the Trades of Norwich,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 56.4 (1982): 488; Celeste Chamberland, “From Apprentice to Master: Social Disciplining and Surgical Education in Early Modern London, 1570–1640,” History of Education Quarterly 53.1 (2013): 27; Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 186–189; Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 128.
- 29.
See: Celeste Chamberland, “From Apprentice to Master: Social Disciplining and Surgical Education in Early Modern London, 1570–1640,” History of Education Quarterly 53.1 (2013): 44.
- 30.
James Cooke, Mellificium Chirurgiae, or, The Marrow of Chirurgery Much Enlarged to Which Is Now Added Anatomy, Illustrated with Twelve Brass Cuts, and Also The Marrow of Physick, Both in the Newest Way / by James Cooke … Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 1649:08. London: Printed by J.D. for Benji. Shirley, and are to be sold at his shop …, 1676, 1.
- 31.
Paul Barbette, A Complete Treatise of Chirurgery: Containing the Chirurgical and Anatomical Works of Paul. Barbette, M.D. Practitioner at Amsterdam: Composed According to the Doctrine of the Circulation of the Blood, and Other New Inventions of the Moderns: With a Treatise of the Plague, with Observations, / by the Same Author, ed. Paul Barbette (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 2561:02. London: Printed by W.G. and are to be sold by Moses Pitt at the Angel by the little North door in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1674), 1.
- 32.
Noah Biggs, Mataeotechnia Medicinae Praxeos, The Vanity of the Craft of Physick, Or, A New Dispensatory Wherein Is Dissected the Errors, Ignorance, Impostures and Supinities of the Schools in Their Main Pillars of Purges, Blood-Letting, Fontanels or Issues, and Diet, &c., and the Particular Medicines of the Shops: With an Humble Motion for the Reformation of the Universities and the Whole Landscap [Sic] of Physick, and Discovering the Terra Incognita of Chymistrie: To the Parliament of England / by Noah Biggs (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 270:11. London: Printed for Edward Blackmore …, 1651).
- 33.
Mitchell and Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, 53.
- 34.
Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine, 19.
- 35.
Yonge, Currus Triumphalis, 41.
- 36.
Elaborating on the analogy to modern-day plastic surgery, Paré’s illustrations bear some resemblance to modern day photo galleries featuring disembodied noses in their pre- and post-operative states; the common practice of censoring identifying traits in said photos underscores the legal, ethical, and personal issues associated with restoring subjectivity to the patient in the modern era.
- 37.
Paré, Workes, 870–882.
- 38.
Similarly, Allison Hobgood argues that readers’ obsessive focus on Richard III’s physical attributes paradoxically does more to efface than illuminate, as the body “gets erased by over-signification.” See: Allison P. Hobgood, “Teeth Before Eyes: Impairment and Invisibility in Shakespeare’s Richard III,” in Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, ed. Sujata Iyengar (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 30.
- 39.
See: Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood, eds., Recovering Disability in Early Modern England (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2013), 4; Katherine Schaap Williams, “Enabling Richard: The Rhetoric of Disability in Richard III,” Disability Studies Quarterly 29.4 (October 2, 2009), http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/997; Naomi Baker, “‘Happy, and Without a Name’: Prosthetic Identities on the Early Modern Stage,” Textual Practice 30.7 (2016): 1311, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2016.1229913; and Lennard J. Davis, Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions, Cultural Front (New York: New York University Press, 2002).
- 40.
Jeffrey R. Wilson, “The Trouble with Disability in Shakespeare Studies,” Disability Studies Quarterly 37.2 (2017), http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5430.
- 41.
Ibid., 869.
- 42.
Alexander Read, A Treatise of the First Part of Chirurgerie, Called by Mee Synthetike the Part Which Teacheth the Reunition of the Parts of the Bodie Disjoyned. Containing the Methodical Doctrine of Wounds: Delivered in Lectures in the Barber-Chirurgeons Hall, upon Tuesdayes, Appointed for These Exercises, and the Keeping of Their Courts. By Alexander Read, Doctor of Physick, a Brother of the Same Company, and One of the Fellowes of the Physitians College of the Famous Citie London (Early English Books, 1475–1640 / 1360:07. London: Printed by John Haviland for Francis Constable, and are to be sold at his shop under Saint Martins Church neare Ludgate, 1638), 11.
- 43.
Charles Allen, Curious Observations in That Difficult Part of Chirurgery, Relating to the Teeth Shewing How to Preserve the Teeth and Gums from All Accidents They Are Subject to, as 1. An Account of Their Nature, 2. Their Alteration, with Their Proper Remedies, 3. Their Cause of Corruption and Putrefaction, 4. Directions for Restoring or Supplying the Defect of Them in Old or Young, 5. Considerations on the Tooth Ache, Looseness of the Teeth, the Decay of the Gums, with Their Remedies and Restoratives, 6. The Use of the Polican or Instrument Wherewith, They Are Drawn on All Occasions: Lastly, Teeth in Children, What They Are in the Original, and How They Come to Perfection, in What Order Produced, the Means to Hasten Them, and Render Them Easie in Breeding: To Which Is Added, A Physical Discourse, Wherein the Reasons for the Beating of the Pulse, or Pulsation of the Arteries, Together with Those of the Circulation of the Blood Are Explained, and the Opinions of Several Ancient and Modern Physicians and Phylosophers, as Gallen, Gassendus, Cartesius, Lower, Willis, &c. upon This Subject Are Examined (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 557:05. Dublyn: Printed and are to be sold in London, by William Whitwood …, 1687).
- 44.
As Katherine Duncan-Jones has noted, the plague as a significant plot device has remained “curiously absent from Renaissance drama and poetry,” suggesting the presence of more than one stage taboo that invoked morbidity. See: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare: An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2010), 62.
- 45.
W. W. Gregg and Thomas Lodge. A Larum for London: 1602. Malone Society Reprints (London: Oxford University Press, 1913); Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, “The Little French Lawyer,” in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Thayer Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 9.
- 46.
In her analysis of Stump in A Larum for London and Cripple The Fair Maid of the Exchange, Naomi Baker identifies the characters’ “unswerving commitment to their vocations”—qualities that demarcate them as “dissident political others” and thus “dislocate” them their normative societies. Such a reading supports the notion that “unswerving commitment,” especially for those disabled in battle, perhaps remained an uneasy subject for dramatization. See: Naomi Baker. “‘Happy, and Without a Name’: Prosthetic Identities on the Early Modern Stage,” Textual Practice 30.7 (2016): 1311, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2016.1229913.
- 47.
W. W. Gregg and Thomas Lodge, A Larum for London, lines 612–615.
- 48.
W. W., Idolaters Ruine and Englands Triumph, Or, The Meditations of a Maimed Souldier Wherein Is Contained Singular Incouragement for All Souldiers That Fight for the Lawes of a Kingdome, and the Liberty of the Subject and Contend for the Gospel of Christ against the Power of Antichrist: And Also Certaine Descriptions of Plots and Traytors Both in England and Ireland, and Also How God Hath Crossed Idolaters Ever Since the Creation at One Time or Other, and of Later Times How God Hath Prevented by His Power and Providence the Noysome Vermine and Brood of Rome, from Bringing Their Cursed Intents and Purposes to Perfection: Written by a Commander, Wounded in the Parliament Service, Well Knowne, and Approved of in and about London, in the Time of His Cure Meditating upon the 48 of Jeremiah, at the 30 Verse … / by W. W. … (Early English Books, 1641–1700 / 232:E.25[3]. London: [s.n.] 1645).
- 49.
W. W., Idolaters Ruine and Englands Triumph.
- 50.
John Milton, “Sonnet XIX,” in Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003), lines 3–4.
- 51.
Again, it is worth acknowledging the important contributions of other scholars who have written about amputation, surgery, and/or the veteran experience within the context of early modernism; see, for example: Geoffrey L. Hudson, “Disabled Veterans and the State in Early Modern England,” in Disabled Veterans in History, ed. David Gerber (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2012); Vin Nardizzi,“The Wooden Matter of Human Bodies,” in The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature, eds. Jean E. Feerick and Vin Nardizzi, Early Modern Cultural Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Patricia Cahill, Unto the Breach: Martial Formations, Historical Trauma, and the Early Modern Stage (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- 52.
Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra, eds., The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future (Cambridge London: The MIT Press, 2007), 3–7.
- 53.
As Vivian Sobchak observes: “the scandal of the [cyborg] metaphor is that it has become a fetishized and ‘unfleshed-out’ catchword that functions vaguely as the ungrounded and ‘floating signifier’ for a broad and variegated critical discourse on technoculture that includes little of these prosthetic realities.” See: Vivian Sobchak, “A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality,” in The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future, eds. Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2007), 19.
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Austin, J. (2020). “By the Knife and Fire”: Conceptions of Surgery and Disability in Early Modern Medical Treatises. In: Dunn, L.C. (eds) Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama. Literary Disability Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57208-2_3
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