Wounds were a potent signifier reaching across all aspects of life in Europe in the middle ages, and their representation, perception and treatment is the focus of this volume. Following a survey of the history of medical wound treatment in the middle ages, paired chapters explore key themes situating wounds within the context of religious belief, writing on medicine, status and identity, and surgical practice. The final chapter reviews the history of medieval wounding through the modern imagination.
Adopting an innovative approach to the subject, this book will appeal to all those interested in how past societies regarded health, disease and healing and will improve knowledge of not only the practice of medicine in the past, but also of the ethical, religious and cultural dimensions structuring that practice.
Contents:
Part I: Medical Overview
1. The Management of Military Wounds in the Middle Ages
Jon Clasper
Part II: Miraculous Wounds and Miraculous Healing
2. Changing Stigmata
Cordelia Warr
3. Miracle and Medicine: Conceptions of Medical Knowledge and Practice in Thirteenth-Century Miracle Accounts
Louise Elizabeth Wilson
Part III: The Broken Body and the Broken Soul
4. The Solution of Continuous Things: Wounds in Late Medieval Medicine and Surgery
Karine van 't Land
5. Medicine for the Wounded Soul
M.K.K. Yearl
Part IV: Wounds as Signifiers for Romance Man and Civil Man
6. Christ's Wounds and the Birth of Romance
Hannah Priest
7. Wounding in the High Middle Ages: Law and Practice
Jenny Benham
Part V: Wound Surgery in the Fourteenth Century
8. Medicines for Surgical Practice in Fourteenth-Century England: The Judgement Against John le Spicer
Ian Naylor
9. The Medical Crossbow from Jan Yperman to Isaak Koedijck
Maria Patijn
Part VI: The Modern Imagination
10. The Bright Side of the Knife: Dismemberment in Medieval Europe and the Modern Imagination
Lila Yawn
About the Editor: Dr Anne Kirkham is a research associate at the University of Manchester. She obtained her PhD in 2007 and has published an article on St Francis of Assisi in Revival and Resurgence in Christian History (Studies in Church History, vol. 44, 2008). Since 2008, she has taught in the department of Art History and Visual Studies and researched, with Cordelia Warr, medieval wounds and has also co-supervised medical students researching dissertations in the history of medieval medicine.
Dr Cordelia Warr is senior lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. She has published on Dressing for Heaven (2010), has co-edited two books on art in Naples with Janis Elliot (The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina, 2004, and Art and Architecture in Naples, 1266-1714, 2010), and is currently working on the representation of stigmata between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries.
For more information about the book, please visit the publishers' website.
