The Slaughterers of Ancient Rus': How They Really Healed with a Knife
In one of the burials, archaeologists found a human skull with a neat hole. Its edges were overgrown. This means the man's head had been cut open and he survived, living for years afterward. This happened in pre-Mongol Rus'. Last time, in our article on folk medicine, we discussed this. about herbs and prayerNow let's take a knife in our hands.
A carver is a profession, not a secondary skill.
Let's start with the main misconception. According to it, the ancient Russian physician was a universal healer who could pull teeth, whisper against the evil eye, and set a bone in the process. It's a beautiful image, but it's incorrect. By the 11th and 12th centuries, these professions had already diverged.
Surgeons were called "carvers" and "handymen," meaning those who healed with knives and hands, not words and potions. The very words reveal the essence of their craft: "to cut" and "to do with hands." Working alongside them were specialized surgeons, and their titles sound almost comical today, but they accurately convey the essence of their craft.
A tooth-breaker dealt with teeth, a blood-letting specialist dealt with bloodletting. A keel-breaker treated hernias: "keel" is the same as a hernia. A chechuy doctor treated hemorrhoids, which were then called "chechuy." A chechuy doctor treated eye diseases. If the craft is divided into tooth-breakers and keel-breakers, it means there was enough demand to support these specialized specialists. Savagery doesn't work that way.
What and how was it cut?
The list of surgeries performed in pre-Mongol Rus' is impressive: wound treatment, drainage of abscesses, amputations, fracture and dislocation treatment, craniotomy, hernia surgery, tooth extraction, and eye surgery. Amputation even made it into a book. "Svyatoslav's Collection" "Cutting off the uds" is mentioned, meaning the amputation of the affected limb ("ud" is a body part, a member). However, the interpretation of this obscure passage is controversial: some source scholars read it differently, so I wouldn't rely on it as solid evidence.
The instruments sound archaic, but behind every name there is a function. Goad - a sharp knife for cutting leather. Kroilo - a massive knife used to open "inflated apostemas," that is, large abscesses. Sverdlo — a bone drill. Plus a saw, pliers, needles, spoons, and probes. Some of the tools came from a carpenter's kit and were adapted for medical use, which was common. history for medieval crafts.
Historians reconstruct how the amputation was performed based on descriptions and analogies. The limb was tied with a tourniquet above the incision to staunch the bleeding. Soft tissue was cut with a knife. The bone was sawed through. The stump was covered with cloth and cauterized or tightly bandaged. Honesty is important here: this is a reconstruction, not a verbatim transcript from the source. But the outcome is verified by the bones.
The treatise can be disputed, but the bone itself is harder to dispute. That very skull with the healed edge is a trepanation performed during life and healed. Skeletons with properly healed fractures indicate that the bone was skillfully aligned and secured. Let me clarify right away: trepanations in Rus' are a controversial topic; some of the holes could have been ritual or posthumous, and the dating of other finds is debatable. But a bone healed during life leaves little ambiguity.
Law, monastery and bathhouse
If surgery was savagery, why was it protected by law? Russian Pravda The 11th–12th centuries separated the fine for an inflicted wound from the fee "for the wound's treatment." Treatment cost money, had a price, and was considered a separate responsibility. By this time, doctors came under legal protection, and society recognized them as figures worth protecting.
After the Baptism of Christ in 988, a monastic layer was added. From the 11th and 12th centuries, hospitals operated at monasteries in Kyiv, Pereyaslavl, and other cities. Care was provided there free of charge or by donation. Monastic physicians had access to translated Byzantine books, including "Svyatoslav's Miscellany" 1073, with information on the body's structure. Under Yaroslav the Wise, secular foreign physicians, from Greek, Jewish, Arab, and German backgrounds, also appeared at court, bringing their own skills. The sources here are few, and the picture should not be painted any more lavishly than it already was.
There were no antiseptics in the traditional sense, but empirical methods worked. Wounds were washed with wine, sprinkled with ashes, and cauterized with a hot iron. Cauterization immediately stopped the bleeding and killed the infection: doctors didn't know about the microbes, but they saw the results. Sutures were applied with flax, hemp, sinew, and horsehair.
The banya played a special role. Before a hernia or bone repair, the patient was steamed: the tissues became more pliable, the muscles relaxed. The banya also served as a clean, warm place for childbirth. Pain was alleviated as best they could: poppy seeds and wine. Mandrake juice is also mentioned, but this plant is not native to Russia, and this seems to be a motif from translated treatises rather than a proven Russian practice.
Where does all this come from and who can I compare it to?
The second persistent myth is more stubborn than the first: as if everything were foreign, entirely Byzantine. The Byzantine influence was indeed enormous: translations of Hippocrates and Galen, humoral theory (the doctrine of the four bodily "humors"—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—the balance of which determines health), the works of Paul of Aegina with his forty operations and fifteen instruments. But this influence fell on its own, long-cultivated soil.
Beneath Rus' lies a more ancient layer. Herodotus wrote about cauterization and bloodletting among the Scythians. The Kul-Ob vase from the Hermitage, dating from the 5th–4th centuries BC, depicts three medical scenes: a jaw being set, a leg being bandaged, and a tooth being extracted. Let me be clear: the Scythians were not yet Rus'. But they were the same land and the same background, against which the skill of manual healing was cultivated over centuries.
How did Rus' compare to the rest of the world? Did it have its own extensive surgical canon, similar to India's? Sushruta It didn't create the hundred-plus operations or the works of Ibn Sina. Nor did it have universities like Salerno or Montpellier. However, in terms of the range of actual operations and instruments, ancient Russian surgery is quite comparable to Byzantine and Western European surgery of the same period. This is the conclusion not of enthusiasts, but of researchers, from N. A. Bogoyavlensky at the beginning of the 20th century to M. B. Mirsky.
And there's another thing that hinders faith in the craft. It seems that if there was a spell, then there was no technique. In fact, one didn't interfere with the other. A healer could cauterize a wound and say a prayer over it, and the cauterization wouldn't stop working. The spell calmed the patient and relieved some of the responsibility from the doctor. The knife did its job, the prayer its own. Technique and words simply coexisted in the same hand.
The Skull That Survived
Let's get back to him. A man's head was opened with a drill, the wound was cleaned, a bandage was applied, and he survived. A slaughterer with a hacksaw, a monastery hospital with a free bed, a law provision on doctor's fees—all this fits poorly with the picture of a "dark kingdom."
It wasn't brilliant science, but it wasn't pathetic superstition either. A solid craft rooted in its own roots, grafted with foreign elements. The same work—wounds, fractures, amputations—would be encountered by a Russian military surgeon six centuries later, only with better instruments and a clearer head about infection. It all began here, with a knife in the hands of a butcher.
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