- Jean MacIntosh Turfa with Marshall J. Becker –
were not performed in Italy in Antiquity, although there is some indication of successful
operations in India where silk thread could be used.
Uterus models in several styles, along with a number of seemingly pregnant lower
bodies (as at Tessennano, wearing modesty skirts but with navels exposed: Unge Sörling
1994: 48–49, Figs 1–2) were offered at many Etruscan and Italic sanctuaries, indicative
of the position of women and the status accorded to their petitions in a wide variety of
cults including the major goddesses. Models of draped and undraped men, women and
children with an array of internal organs in relief on the torso (Fig. 47.7) are mirrored in
large plaques or partial reliefs depicting schematically rendered internal organs. Tabanelli
(1962) was able to show that there is no human anatomy lesson here – the best of the
models can be sorted into beef/pork/or chicken, much as one might see in a butcher’s
shop, but clearly they are intended to remind the gods of healed affl ictions. The recently
published deposit at the site of Veii Comunità has several nude and draped, male and
female torsos, many with exposed organs: the torsos have truncated necks, arms, legs
reminiscent of modern medical illustrations, but the organs themselves are completely
fanciful (Bartoloni and Benedettini 2011: 567–575, pls 73–78).
Recke (see Chapter 59) has presented the material evidence, from statues to limbless
torsos, for knowledge or practice of surgery in Hellenistic Etruria and Latium, fewer than
40 sculptures depicting viscera against an otherwise lively human body. Of these, only
a few pieces deliberately depict anything like a surgical incision – the most compelling
example is the nude male torso, headless and limbless, in the Ingolstadt Collection (Figs
59.17–19), which appears to show marks representing surgical sutures along the edges of
the “wound.” A few other fragmentary torsos seem to show sawed-off ribs in the incision
Figure 47.7 The “Decoufl é bust” purchased by the Louvre, 2011, from the estate of medical scholar
Pierre Decoufl é and probably found at Canino (Vulci). Third/second century bc, inv. no. MNE1341,
photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Stéphane Maréchalle. (See J. M. Turfa, “Exceptional
Etruscan man joins the Louvre,” Etruscan News 14 (Winter 2012) 23.