A 15th-century scroll shows surgeons' anatomy drawn as men opening their own bodies

historyThe Public Domain Reviewc. 1425–1435 · England

A 15th-century scroll shows surgeons' anatomy drawn as men opening their own bodies

the gist

The Sweden scroll is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of the surgical writings of John of Arderne, an English physician from the 1300s who is remembered as one of the founders of modern surgery. Arderne was one of the first scholarly master surgeons, who documented his techniques carefully and set himself apart from the barber-surgeons who still bled patients and pulled teeth. His treatise mixed practical surgery with remedies ranging from egg white and rye bread to stranger ingredients such as earthworms. The scroll is about 5.4 metres long and was probably made for a wealthy London woman between about 1430 and 1450, possibly linked to a Swedish queen named Philippa. Its most striking images are four full-size figures that open their own torsos to show red circulatory systems, skeletons and organs, painted in an unusually detailed and theatrical style.

so what

The scroll shows how medieval medicine was moving from folk practice toward documented, illustrated knowledge of the body, a shift that later anatomists such as Vesalius would push much further. Its figures also reveal how bodies were understood and displayed before the printed anatomy books of the Renaissance.

fun fact

Arderne's surgical treatise on anal fistulas remained a well-used reference work until the late 1600s.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

Usman Khawaja refuses to answer Sandpapergate question about Pat Cummins | 7.30

from ABC News In-depth

One of the darkest days in Australia's sporting history has been dragged back into the spotlight.

A new autobiography by former Test cricketer Usman Khawaja has made explosive revelations about the Australian Test team's 2018 ball-tampering saga in South Africa.

7.30 host Sarah Ferguson speaks to Usman Khawaja.

7.30 is the ABC's flagship current affairs program, delivering original journalism, exclusive investigations, in-depth analysis and interviews on the major issues affecting Australia and the world.

With on-the-ground reporting from ABC journalists across every state and territory and around the world, 7.30 has the latest on politics, policy, the economy, cost of living, housing, health, climate and energy, national security and global affairs.

Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated.

on YouTube: ABC News In-depth ↗