ABSTRACT
There are very few entries in the Bolognese records that clearly identify the illnesses suffered by the friars as requiring the intervention of a surgeon. However, surgeons may have been called in to assist those people, both friars and seculars, who were involved in an accident at S. Francesco in 1254, related in the chronicles of Bologna, in which two vaults of the new convent church collapsed whilst it was being built, killing twelve men and two of the friars. John of Arderne, the rectal surgeon, whose ingenious operation for the cure of the distressingly common mediaeval problem of fistula-in-ano was recorded in a number of mediaeval medical manuscripts, offered this radical surgery to several friars in England. An alternative to the use of hot irons was 'potential' cautery, the application of corrosive substances such as arsenic sublimate, oil of vitriol or quicklime to withdraw humours by making weeping wounds on the surface of the skin.
