„Do nam er die zang in sin hant“: Chirurgische Handgriffe in Feld, Buch und Stadt

This article explores the language of hands and manual gestures in two of the earliest printed texts on surgery, written in German by the Strasbourg practitioners Hieronymus Brunschwig and Hans von Gersdorff. Going back to the medieval learned tradition, surgeons regularly invoke the etymological root of surgery or cirurgia in the Greek word for hand and use this trope to demarcate their expertise from that of learned physicians who were said to lack manual skill. This article offers a close reading of Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia (1497) and Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarznei (1517) alongside documents from the Strasbourg archives to explore the work done by the trope of hands and handgriffe (manual gestures). I show that such gestures were a key moment for re-negotiating the boundaries of legitimate surgical practice, especially vis-a-vis learned medicine. More importantly, I argue that hands and gestures were central to these craft surgeons’ efforts to carve out an honourable and useful place for surgery in artisanal urban society with its complex sensibilities around "body work".