Diana Whaley

Dupuytren’s Disease: A Legacy of the North?

This study identifies four miracle cures set in Orkney and Iceland in the 12th and 13th Centuries and recorded in the sagas of the earls of Orkney and the bishops of Iceland, in which the condition of the hand which was healed bears a resemblance to Dupuytren’s disease. The possibility that one hand was cured by traumatic rupture of this condition and another treated by palmar fasciotomy is discussed.

Voices from the Past: A Note on Termagant and Herod

Hamlet’s much-quoted advice to the players of the ‘Murder of Gonzago’ derives its urgency, of course, from concerns beyond the artistic. The plot of this ‘Mousetrap’, shadowing as it does the treachery which Hamlet suspects of his ‘uncle-father’ Claudius, may stir him to some betrayal of emotion which will furnish precious confirmation of Hamlet’s suspicions. However, Hamlet’s injunctions also reveal artistic preferences which may or may not be identical with Shakespeare’s own, and we might pause over his examples of culpable histrionics to consider exactly what kind of characters these names evoked, and by what route they reached the text of Hamlet. In the case of Herod, the biblical, literary and dramatic traditions are rich and still well known today, though there is room for debate about the precise nature of the Herod Shakespeare might have had in mind. Termagant, by contrast, is a fascinatingly obscure figure — historically non-existent and seemingly absent from pre-Shakespearean English drama as preserved, yet sufficiently notorious to have turned into an eponym. The discussion will begin with Herod, before moving on to the more tantalising case of Termagant.

A Medieval Casebook: Hand Cures Documented in the Icelandic Sagas of Bishops

The Sagas of Icelandic bishops composed in and around the 13th century reveal something of the incidence and treatment of various hand conditions in the medieval period. A selection from the relevant material is translated and discussed.