Cosmas and Damian, The Miracle of the Black Leg, and Transplant Histories

Season 1, Episode 5

listen on Spotify
listen on Apple Podcasts

In this episode, Emma and Christy explore the story of surgeon-saints Cosmas and Damian through paintings of the ‘miracle of the black leg’ from c. 1370-1495 in Italy and Spain. These pictures bring up complicated ideas around visibility and race, surgery, and historiography. In this episode, we talk Blackness in early modern Europe, organ donation and race, the long history of systemic racism in the medical system, surgeon-historians, and looking at the past from a modern perspective.

IMAGES DISCUSSED:
Master of Los Balbases, A verger’s dream: Saints Cosmas and Damian performing a miraculous cure by transplantation of a leg (c. 1495)
Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors (1533)
Joan Miró, A Star Caresses the Breast of a Negress (Painting Poem) (1938)
Fra Angelico, The Healing of Justinian by Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian (c. 1438-1440)
Matteo di Pacino, St. Cosmas and St. Damian (c. 1370-1375)
Kara Walker, Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994)
Example of a 19th-century silhouette portrait: Mamma (c. 1834)
Sano di Pietro, Madonna col Bambino Angeli e Santi, Predella con Storie dei Santi Cosma e Damiano (1444)
School of Castile and Leon, Saints Cosmas and Damian Healing a Christian with a Leg of a Dead Moor (c. 1460-1480)
Image of a dark-skinned man with a white nose: From the ‘Dissertation of Noses’ in A Solution to the Question (1733)

REFERENCES:
Jacobus Voragine, ‘Saints Cosmas and Damian (September 27),’ in The Golden Legend (New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1941 (1275)), 575-578.
Olivette Otele, African Europeans: An Untold History (London: Hurst, 2020).
Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Fay Bound Alberti, ‘Robert Chelsea and the First African American Face Transplant: Two Years On,’ AboutFace, 15 July 2021, https://aboutfaceyork.com/2021/07/robert-chelsea-and-the-first-african-american-face-transplant-two-years-on/. 
Jamie Ducharme, ‘He’s the First African American to Receive a Face Transplant. His Story Could Change Health Care,’ Time, 24 October 2019, https://time.com/5709294/first-african-american-face-transplant/. 
Emily Cock, Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).
William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (c. 1596-1599).
Thomas Schlich, ‘How Gods and Saints Became Transplant Surgeons: The Scientific Article as a Model for the Writing of History,’ History of Science 33, no. 3 (1 September 1995), 311-331.

FURTHER READING:
Paul Craddock, Spare Parts: An Unexpected History of Transplants (London: Penguin, 2021).
David Hamilton, A History of Organ Transplantation: Ancient Legends to Modern Practice (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).
Jillian Harrold, ‘Saintly Doctors: The Early Iconography of SS. Cosmas and Damian in Italy’ (PhD diss., University of Warwick, 2007).

---

‘Drawing Blood’ was made possible with funding from the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network. 
Follow our Twitter @drawingblood_
Audio postproduction by Sias Merkling
‘Drawing Blood’ cover art © Emma Merkling
All audio and content © Emma Merkling and Christy Slobogin
Intro music: ‘There Will Be Blood’ by Kim Petras, © BunHead Records 2019. We’re still trying to get hold of permissions for this song – Kim Petras text us back!!