Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 386.7

JOHN WOODALL (1556?-1643) The surgeons mate, or, Military & domestique surgery. : Discouering faithfully & plainly ye method and order of ye surgeons chest, ye uses of the instruments, the vertues and operations of ye medicines, w[i]th ye exact cures of wounds made by gun-shott, and otherwise as namely: wounds, apos fumes, ulcers, fistula’s, fractures, dislocations, w[i]th ye most easie & safest wayes of amputation or dismembring, the cures of the scuruey, of ye fluxes of ye belly, of ye collicke and iliaca passio, of tenasmus and exitus ani, and of the calenture / with A treatise of ye cure of ye plague. Published for the service of His Ma[jes]tie and of the com[mon]wealth. Printed by Rob. Young [J. Legat?, and E. P[urslowe] for Nicholas Bourne, and are to be sol[d at his] shop at the south entrance of the Royall Exchange 1639 2nd, enlarged edition [2], A2, [3], A3, [7], B, [1], B2, [1], B3, [6], C, [1], C2 [4], D, [1] [98, 141-275, [13], 301-412, [12] p., [1] folded leaf of plates ; ill. 31 cm.

In 1613 Woodall was appointed the first surgeon-general of the East India Company, probably recommended by Sir Thomas Smyth, its governor and his patron. Responsible for selecting surgeons, treating injured workmen at the company’s small dockside hospital at Blackwall (Poplar), and supplying ships with surgeons’ chests, he published in 1617 The Surgeons Mate, or, A Treatise...of the Surgions Chest, the first good medical textbook of its kind in English, chiefly written for young sea surgeons. The instruments and medicines for a surgeon’s chest, with their uses, are clearly described, followed by sections on acute surgical problems, potentially lethal medical conditions, a discourse on scurvy, and a treatise about alchemy and chemical medicines. Woodall’s is also the earliest comprehensive clinical account of scurvy to prescribe lemon juice for its prevention and cure. Between 1626 and 1628, the Barber-Surgeons were authorized to supply surgeons’ chests for the navy, merchant marine, and the army, which prompted Woodall to publish in 1628 his Viaticum, the Path-Way to the Surgeons Chest: specializing in the treatment of gunshot wounds, it was mainly designed to instruct young surgeons with the English troops who attempted to relieve Huguenots blockaded in the Atlantic port of La Rochelle. This short work and Woodall’s Treatise…of… the Plague and a Treatise of Gangrene and Sphacelos were incorporated with separate title-pages in this revised and extended edition of The Surgeons Mate, or Military and Domestique Surgery in 1639. Dedicated to Charles I, it contains a [now-trimmed and missing] equestrian portrait of the king engraved by William Marshall and a fine plate illustrating Woodall’s own invention of hand-trephine, safely used for cutting holes in skulls for the next three centuries. His detailed description of the amputation of sphacelos, or dead tissue, at the upper limit of established gangrene, enabled him to save more than a hundred lives; it was long accepted as a standard work on the subject. A discourse on venereal disease and a dispensatory of medicines, promised in the epilogue to his Surgions Mate in 1617 never materialized.

Cited references: Garrison & Morton #2144; Osler #2473; NLM 17th c. #13141

John Martin M.D. Endowment