I'll start with the one that's in the event post! Thomas Rowlandson, 1793

it's a political comic critiquing the surgical technique of performing amputations to prevent the spread of gangrene

the list of "approved surgeons" is very like "lol what are you doing these people are butchers, not doctors wtffffff"

G. Cruikshank, 1818, "introduction of the gout"

gout was largely seen as a rich person's disease, where inflammation symptoms were attributed to wealthy people eating too much and then not moving at all

so the little devil is basically setting his foot on fire for the sin of sloth

this is fascinating

N. Dorville, 1901

two surgeons harvested the organs out of a homeless person and are stuffing the corpse with newspaper to hide their tracks

it's a French illustration reacting to news about the developing black market as medicine was starting to experiment with organ transplants

this is a surgery chart from the 16th century

basically, "surgeon" used to be the word used for field medics. They had to know first aid, but be ready to deal with immediate battle wounds. the surgery was in knowing how to sew up a stab wound differently in different parts of the body

the most fucked up diagram about how to deliver a baby

maybe don't use a noose??????

maybe that explains a percentage of the high infant mortality rate????????????

I worked really hard to find a way to have an event prompt dealing with humoural medicine and eventually gave up because I couldn't find a way to organically explain the four humours without being like "let's have a history class in the middle of your roleplay event"

I also didn't work very hard at all at that and don't know why that's how I chose to present that idea

I thought about it like twice

didn't even push it to chi

19th century, a commentary on syphilis

death lurks under the mask of pretty girls

never trust a girl to not have an STD, I guess

getting sick does ROUGH things to a lady's face

I still love this plague doctor duck

Dr Quackington, I presume

Dutch masectomy, from the 1650s

Ancient art is THE BEST ART tho?

the library had it categorized as "surgeon applying a cautery iron to clearly defined points on a woman's lower abdomen (indicating the liver?). Pen drawing after a tenth century manuscript"

cautery used to be used a lot to prevent the spread of "bad blood"

And sometimes where people "needed" to be bled would be in some pretty sensitive areas

good luck with that migraine cure, dude

another cautery chart

This did get used in the event and tbh I still don't have context for it. The style is ambiguously medieval and it's amazing?? but I don't really know what it was initially depicting

my comment in mod chat is just "found the smut prompt"

oh oh right it was from a discussion of pre-modern STD treatments

of which this is another

C.J. Grant, 1831

That one was a commentary about miracle pills and snake oil cures -- you could buy a pill that promised to cure you, but what might it ACTUALLY do

This puts the fun in fundamentally fucked up.

In the early 1800s, people tried to harness the healing power of water in a lot of ways

"hydrotherapy" was often "waterboarding your way to a healthy life"

John Sintelaer. 1709

mercury was used as treatment for venereal disease, but then people ended up with mercury poisoning

so this was subtitled "the scourge of venus and mercury" like the two gods were coming together to fuck people up

and thus ends my showcase

thank you for flipping through this slideshow

old stuff is rly cool okay

Jessie!!!! We forgot to work in the vegetable man somewhere

But old timey medicine and practices are both fascinating

horrifying, but fascinating

the baby noose still just leaves me....

kid looks done with the world and he's not even out yet... but who can blame him when there's a baby noose?

I'M SORRY look there was only one prompt for weird medicine and I wanted to use big testicle man

vegetable man would probably also work well for "weird prosthetics" prompt

big testicle man was a good choice tbh

this was a fascinating 5am read

lol GOOD MORNING