Description
The colorful image shows a man in blue undergarments, whose abdomen is made transparent (so that several inner organs can be seen) and who is completely wounded by multiple causes, namely war, accidents and diseases: not only is it an evidence that he is ill (with his armpits and groin sporting rounded buboes and swollen glands) but also his skin is covered in rashes, pustules, scratches, bleeding cuts, wounds and bruises, sliced by knives, spears, arrows, and swords (of varying sizes, and some remaining in the skin), objects have pierced the soles of his feet, and he is attacked by animals (such as dog, snake, scorpion, spider, bee, toad, etc.) whose bites and stings could bring poison or disease into the human body and so it must be treated. Despite all of this terrible misfortune, the man is alive, his eyes are open and he looks unperturbed, seeming to be hopeful of how medicine could help him.
The Wound Man is a diagram which started to appear in European medical treatises from the late fourteenth-century onwards, acting as an index of various injuries and diseases (enumerated in red and indicated by short sentences, around the human figure) whose related treatment, cure, surgery or pharmaceutical practice could be found on the treatise.
For instance, the spider crawling up the man's left thigh has the following caption in German “Wo eine spynne gesticht, 20†[When a spider bites, 20], directing the reader to the corresponding section of the text (paragraph 20 of the book) where the cure is presented.
