skip to page content - In the Middle Ages, medicine was very
much intertwined with astrology and other nonscientific
superstitions. This manuscript on vellum, produced in southern
Germany around 1410, contains pen and ink drawings with
explanatory texts in German and Latin. The first drawing shows
the earth and seven planets. It is followed by Zodiac-man, a
naked man shown with the 12 signs of the zodiac, each relating
to a specific part of the body. Next are four bloodletting
charts of the human body. Such bleeding charts or calendars were
widely used in this period. They provided instructions on the
optimum days on which to draw blood, and the body points from
which to draw it. The very complexity of the instructions
offered–they varied for different phases of the moon, different
diseases, and different body points– lent a degree of
credibility to an essentially worthless and often harmful act.
The work concludes with drawings of the Tower of Wisdom (text in
German); a man called Microcosmus; a man called M