The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance

The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the RenaissanceThe Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance

Arrowhead

Arrowhead

Arrowhead Bronze 150 BC–AD 200 Seleucia, Iraq University of Michigan Excavations. KM 18259

Paul of Aegina (ca. AD 625–690) gives us detailed descriptions of how surgeons should extract arrows and missiles from wounded soldiers:

When a bone is wounded, the mode of extraction is by pulling; if, therefore, the head of the weapon be in sight, we make the extraction immediately. But, if it is hid, we must, says Hippocrates, get the wounded person to put himself in the same posture as when he received the wound, and thus make the examination.

Listen to the translation: