Anatomy Unzipped: John of Arderne’s Sweden Scroll (ca. 1425–35) The English physician John of Arderne (1307–ca. 1380) is remembered as one of the founding figures of modern surgery. He was one of the earliest scholarly “master surgeons”, who differentiated themselves — through rigorous training and by thoroughly documenting their techniques — from the barber-surgeon generalists that were still blood-letting and pulling teeth across Europe. Arderne authored _De Arte Phisicali et de Cirurgia_ (On the Art of Medicine and Surgery), a treatise full of actionable instructions for a wide range of maladies.
Pharmacological recipes appeared for kidney stones, sciatica, poisoning (by toad bite and scorpion sting), cataracts, and “frenzy”. Ingredients ranged from the culinary (egg white, rye bread) to the unsavory (earthworms, “the urine of a virgin”). Most famously, Arderne’s _Fistula in Ano_ includes detailed descriptions for the surgical treatment of anal fistulas (apparently, a more common issue in horseback riding’s heyday).
Dozens of manuscripts transcribing Arderne’s work survive today: testament to how useful his guide was to the working surgeon. So useful was _Fistula in Ano_, finds historian Peter Murray Jones, that the text remained a well-trafficked reference work until the late 1600s. Pictured here is a highly unusual manuscript of Arderne’s work: rather than the more-often-preserved crude, convenient copies made for the surgeon’s reference, the Sweden scroll is lavishly illustrated vellum, measuring 542 cm (17 feet 9 inches) long and 36 cm (1 foot 2 inches) across.
The only known Arderne manuscript in a scroll format, and the most richly illuminated, it was too unwieldy to have been used in the operating theater. Based on its extravagance (polychrome painting across six calfskin sheets) and the inclusion of an obstetrical treatise, scholars surmise that it was likely commissioned by a wealthy female Londoner sometime between 1430 and 1450. How, then, did the manuscript find its way to the National Library of Sweden?
The document has been linked to the Swedish queen Philippa, born an English princess in 1394. Alongside an abridged version of _De Arte_, _Fistula in Ano_, and a text on childbirth attributed to the author Muscio, we find more than 120 painted figures, mostly in the margins: noblemen and noblewomen — identifiable from their fashionable pointed poulaine shoes, many of them obligingly opening their robes to show their representative diseases. The oft-copied surgical diagrams from Arderne’s _Fistula_ appear, along with a series of infants spinning in balloon-like wombs.
By far the most remarkable images, however, are the four full-size figures descending down the scroll’s central column. Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. One nude stands, arms open, with a bright red circulatory system traced over his skin; below, a skeleton, a red halo throwing the grayscale bones into high relief.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
