[MR] Fwd: [EK] The latest extreme sport - Jousting sca-east Digest, Vol 90, Issue 70

[Dexter Guptill]

As Karen said...

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Karen <karen_larsdatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sure they did.  Lots of men were seriously injured and/or killed.  King Henri II
> of France died from a lance-wound to the eye, during the tournaments celebrating
> his daughter's wedding.  [...]
>
> [re: Dulcy's]
>> Their idea of doctoring was to put leeches on people. I am just saying.
>
> That's kind of oversimplifying medieval medicine.  Not that they didn't use
> leeches, of course, but it wasn't all doctors willy-nilly prescribing leeches
> for every possible injury & illness, for a thousand years of human history. ;-)

I'm teaching Medicine, Physick, and Surgery again at Pennsic, this
year.  Re: Henri II, his court surgeon, Ambroise Pare', was one of the
top cutters in Europe at the time. In addition, Charles V of Spain,
Holy Roman Emperor, let his court Physician consult on the injury.
Andreas Vesalius, the physician in question, by that time was the
foremost anatomist around. His Anatomy stayed in use until a gent
named Gray published.

Henri's problem was a lance blow that punched a fragment into his eye,
through the brain, and out the ear. Pare' and Vesalius got that out,
and managed to keep it from getting infected. Problem was, that Henri
had also sustained a concussion with subdural hematoma. The docs
weren't able to find that injury while he was alive, or they could
have trepanned him. In a rarely-permitted Royal autopsy, they found
that it was a "counter-coup" concussion, with the brain having bounced
off the inside of the skull opposite the impact site.

Erich von Kleinfeld,
Barber-Surgeon,

Mka Dex