Hans von Gersdorff's Fieldbook of Surgery: Wound Man, Bloodletting and a Skeleton, 1528

Little is known of the early life of Hans von Gersdorff, one of the best-known German surgeons of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Born about 1455, he left no record of how or where he was trained. In 1517, in Strasbourg, he published the Feldbuch der Wundarznei, the Fieldbook of Surgery, or more literally of "wound doctoring". He died in 1529. The U.S. National Library of Medicine holds an edition printed in 1528 by Johann Schott of Strasbourg.

The title page of the 1528 edition, with surgeons treating a wounded man. National Library of Medicine.

A surgeon's handbook

The book drew heavily on the medieval surgeon Guy de Chauliac, and it became one of Europe's standard surgical texts for years. It was especially known for its advice on amputating limbs, an operation Gersdorff is said to have performed at least 200 times. Beyond the anatomical figures shown here, it illustrates operations such as amputation, trephining and setting bones, and it pictures leprosy.

Four woodcuts

The Feldbuch has four anatomical woodcuts. Almost nothing is known of their artist, Johann Ulrich Wechtlin, known as the Master of the Crossed Pilgrim's Staves.

A bloodletting figure, with the points for letting blood marked and the internal organs exposed. National Library of Medicine.

The “Wound Man”, showing injuries from many kinds of weapons. National Library of Medicine.

The folding sheets

Two of the woodcuts, a skeleton and a figure of the organs of the body called the "viscera-manikin", were first issued by the same printer in 1517 as loose, folded sheets, and were often slipped into copies of the first edition. By later editions like this one of 1528, they had become part of the book.

The skeleton, Table 1. National Library of Medicine.

The “viscera-manikin”, Table 2. National Library of Medicine.

Sources

• National Library of Medicine, "Hans von Gersdorff: Feldtbuch der Wundartzney," Historical Anatomies on the Web; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Pages photographed by the National Library of Medicine from its copy of the 1528 edition.