Jack Hartnell and Ruben Verwaal

Art historian Jack Hartnell and medical researcher Ruben Verwaal discuss medical imagery and mythology, including a look at the famous Wound Man image and a reflection on how our bodily fluids have been represented through history.

Hartnell is head of research at the National Gallery and author of Medieval Bodies: Life, Death, and Art in the Middle Ages. In Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image, he looks at the emergence and endurance of a striking medical image reproduced widely across the globe in the medieval and early modern era. The image features a figure pierced by weapons and ravaged by injuries and disease. Hartnell says the image was an encyclopaedia of surgical knowledge, a literary and religious muse, a catalyst for changing media landscapes and a cross-cultural artistic feat.

Verwaal is a research fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University and curator of medical collections at the Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam. In Blood, Sweat and Tears: A History of Bodily Fluids, he looks at the history of bodily fluids such as bile, breastmilk, snot, pus, poo and vomit. Verwaal says that while we might find them repugnant today, this was not always the case. He says each one of our bodily fluids is dripping with symbolism, mythology and its own cultural history.