Jack Hartnell, "Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image" (Princeton UP, 2025)

New Books in Medicine · Sep 18, 2025 · 1h 4m

The Wound Man—a medical diagram depicting a figure fantastically pierced by weapons and ravaged by injuries and diseases—was reproduced widely across the medieval and early modern globe. In Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Jack Hartnell charts the emergence and endurance of this striking image, used as a visual guide to the treatment of many ailments. Taking readers on a remarkable journey from medieval Europe to eighteenth-century Japan, Dr. Hartnell explains the historic popularity of this gruesome image and why the Wound Man continues to…