INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

Much early modern surgery dealt with cutting out disease by excision or amputation or with mechanical repairs such as setting bones or putting dislocations back in place. It possessed methods such as dressing, bandaging and stitching which helped to heal the effects of accidents, war and surgery. Surgeons were in constant demand. The damage caused by disease, by a variety of accidents at home or at work, as in farms or the fulling and tanning mills, and by falls from horses, the standard mode of transport, all provided a steady stream of clients. Surgeons also treated burns, which were especially frequent amongst young children and the elderly, who often fell into unguarded fires in their homes. Since Hippocratic times, war had been thought to provide excellent training for surgeons, and they did not hesitate to boast of their battlefield experience. Knife wounds and contusions from blunt instruments were repaired by surgeons, as was the new type of wound from gunshot, which resulted from the fact that ‘Man in every age doth devise new instruments of death … we have in our age, Gun-shot, the imitation of God his thunder; but the example is more fierce, and sendeth more souls to the devil, than the pattern.’

The body's outer covering also lay within the province of the surgeon, who applied topical medicines, cauteries of burning iron or corrosives, or the knife to the growths and blemishes that appeared on the skin, such as ulcers, tumours, swellings, spots and discolourations.