Our September meeting came with a warning of graphic content, as Eddie Smallwood explained some of the techniques that were used to treat battlefield injuries during the Wars of the Roses. While some of his descriptions and demonstrations were indeed gruesome, the jokes were even worse!

Since retiring as a police officer, Eddie has acted for many years as a guide at Bosworth Battlefield. He spoke to us dressed as a barber-surgeon, those two professions being united before the 16th century. There was no formal medical training but a practitioner would have served a long apprenticeship to develop the skills required. Diagnosis of general ailments often began with analysing the patient’s urine, then the barber-surgeon might recommend eating particular foods or removing blood to bring the four humours back into balance. During blood-letting, the patient gripped a stout rod while the surgeon made an incision in their upper arm. That rod, bound in blood and bandages, is the origin of the familiar red and white barber’s pole.

By the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, artillery was becoming more widely used and cannonballs could break bones at a range of nearly a mile. Treatments were limited by a papal decree that banned surgeons from opening up the body so, for example, a broken leg could be set but no incision could be made to treat broken ribs. On the other hand, if a projectile such as a musket-ball had already entered the body, the surgeon could attempt to cut it out or use special tools to extract it. A slender “needlepoint” arrow could pass through poor-quality chainmail but could be pulled back out. Barbed arrows would need to be pushed right through! Longbowmen indulged in biological warfare by coating their arrows in mud (or worse) so that wounds would become infected. To counter this, the surgeon would repeatedly pull a cloth coated in honey through the hole while it was healing.

Amputations had to be performed quickly to reduce the loss of blood and strongly curved blades were developed to achieve this. The wound would be cauterized – all without anaesthetic – and then stitched with thread made from nettles, which would dissolve over a few weeks. Pads of yarrow fibres could be used to staunch bleeding. It is a testament to the surgeon’s skill that a reasonable proportion of his patients did survive.