March 6, 2013 12:45 pm
What Does This Head From the Thirteenth Century Tell Us About Medieval Medicine?
Is this the oldest surviving European science project? Photo: Archives of Medical Science
A new analysis of the oldest-known human dissection specimen in Europe suggests that the Dark Ages may have been more scientifically advanced than we think.
The French head-and-shoulders specimen, which researchers originally thought woud date to the 15th or 16th century, may have been used in an instructional capacity, says LiveScience:
The preparation of the specimen was surprisingly advanced. Radiocarbon dating puts the age of the body between A.D. 1200 and A.D.1280, an era once considered part of Europe’s anti-scientific “Dark Ages.” In fact, said study researcher Philippe Charlier, a physician and forensic scientist at University Hospital R. Poincare in France, the new specimen suggests surprising anatomical expertise during this time period.
“It’s state-of-the-art,” Charlier told LiveScience. “I suppose that the preparator did not do this just one time, but several times, to be so good at this.”
Many still believe the uber-religiosity of the Dark Ages prevented things like autopsies and medical dissection from even happening:
But autopsies and dissection were not under a blanket church ban in the Middle Ages. In fact, the church sometimes ordered autopsies, often for the purpose of looking for signs of holiness in the body of a supposedly saintly person.
The first example of one of these “holy autopsies” came in 1308, when nuns conducted a dissection of the body of Chiara of Montefalco, an abbess who would be canonized as a saint in 1881. The nuns reported finding a tiny crucifix in the abbess’ heart, as well as three gallstones in her gallbladder, which they saw as symbolic of the Holy Trinity.
The head, filled with a “metal wax” for preservation purposes, is set to go on display at the Parisian Museum of the History of Medicine later this year.
More from Smithsonian.com:
A Forensic Analysis of Richard the Lionheart’s Heart
The History of Health Food, Part 2: Medieval and Renaissance Periods
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Just looks like someone was axe murdered to the head, and the decay that followed.
Comment by Bulk Rap — March 7, 2013 @ 7:23 pm
This is a good article, but it makes one glaring historical error. The 13th century wasn’t the Dark Ages! In fact, it’s a period called the High Middle Ages, a time when Europe had fully emerged from the Dark Ages (ca. 600-1000) and before the plagues and social upheavals of the 14th century.
Comment by Leon — March 25, 2013 @ 11:23 am
As a medievalist, I have long understood the term “Dark Ages” to refer to the EARLY Middle Ages–roughly from the fall of Rome to some time in the 11th century.
Comment by Mary — April 1, 2013 @ 8:43 am
So what everyone is saying is .. Smart News isn’t so smart (because they got their facts wrong)? Hehe
Comment by Kim — May 4, 2013 @ 6:09 am
It says to me “axes hurt”
Comment by Dennis Bauer — May 9, 2013 @ 3:45 am
I would end the Dark Ages at 1150 A.D. when a fundamentalist reaction swept through the Arab world. At that point the works of the great Arab physicians Avencia and Averroes became available to the west. Of course so did the rest of Arab knowledge.
His students took copies of his books with them but Averroes refused to leave his homeland. In 1175, he looked out from his prison cell and watched his books burn. Europe replaced the Arab world as the center of learning.
Comment by Hubert Barge — May 17, 2013 @ 8:27 pm
In addition to getting the “Dark Ages” time period wrong – It was not necessarily a period of ignorance and barbarism as so many think. The connotation of “Dark” with “evil” has fastered this belief, when originally the term was applied simply because no one could “shed any light” on this time period (c.600-100AD). Most, practically all records and historical documents had been systematically destroyed. Will we ever know what happened, or more importantly what happened that required our history to be so sanitized? Personally, I have my own theories and I think the time has come. I see no reason that post-Rome fallout would be any worse, than say 14th-15th c. Italy. Both were pretty rough and unpleasant times if you weren’t near the top of the political and economic food chain.
Comment by David Nolan — June 6, 2013 @ 11:09 am
fostered
Comment by David Nolan — June 6, 2013 @ 11:10 am