Woodalls Viaticum

Mathias Abebe

Class of 2025, Johns Hopkins University

Illustration from *The Surgeons Mate* by John Woodall, 1655, 30 cm quarto, Wellcome Collection, London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

First published in London in 1628 by J. Dawson, Woodalls Viaticum: The path-way to the Surgions Chest is a 30-page surgical guide primarily meant to instruct young surgeons accompanying the English troops sent to aid Huguenots blockaded in the Atlantic port during the Siege of La Rochelle. The siege was part of wars between the French royal forces of King Louis XIII of France and the Huguenots of La Rochelle, a group of French Protestants. England sent fleets to support La Rochelle repeatedly, and Woodall’s work was sent with the surgeons who traveled with the troops that boarded the fleet. Woodall’s text works in conjunction with the tools in the surgeons’ chests provided to the military surgeons by the King.

Woodalls Viaticum, along with short works entitled Treatise … of … the Plague and a Treatise of Gangrene and Sphacelos, was added to a revised edition of his more famous work, The Surgeons Mate, or, Military and Domestique Surgery, which was published in 1639. The Viaticum opens with a preface to the reader, touching on the honorable service these young surgeons selected by the Crown will be providing to England, as well as the obligations that come with such service. He starts the contents of the guide with instructions on how to dress gunshot wounds, then gives general pieces of advice to his young surgeon readers for common scenarios they may find themselves in, and ends with a section on how cataplasms are a good form of treatment when used in moderation. The book is only known in one edition.

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