Surgical instruments laid out on a table, for use in cataract and hernia operations during the mid 1500s, with two men in 16th century dress standing behind it

Surgical instruments laid out on a table, for use in cataract and hernia operations during the mid 1500s, with two men in 16th century dress standing behind it

Colour facsimile process print after a 16th century manuscript, 1925

Stromayr, Caspar

[Berlin] : [Idra-Verlagsanstalt], [1925]

Caspar Stromayr (fl. 1559) specialised as a cutter of hernias and a coucher of cataracts in 16th century Germany. Written in 1559, the manuscript reproduced here existed primarily as a surgical work dealing with hernia, and included a section on the anatomy and surgery of the eye. It was rediscovered in 1909 and published in this facsimile edition under the direction of surgical historian, Walter von Brunn, in 1925.

The operation of a hernia, which Stromayr describes is extremely similar to a mastectomy of the period (non-operative) in which the surgeon would loop a thread around the maligned area and gradually strangulate it until the strangled area would scar and drop off.

There are various versions of these prints, and their authenticity is hard to ascertain