IVv (photo by Jack Hartnell)Even safely contained on the page, the Wound Man is deeply unnerving. The Wound Man, he argues, was not “originally designed to inspire fear or to menace.” Instead, early versions of the Wound Man accompanied by summaries of medical treatments likely offered reassurance to patients coping with ailments of their own. Virtually anyone who encountered the Wound Man in Medieval German-speaking Europe would have also been exposed to images of religious violence. The violence enacted on the Wound Man, Hartnell writes, may well have conjured the suffering of these figures, provoking empathy and solidarity. A little more explanation of why the Wound Man was a solidly sympathetic figure in the eyes of Medieval viewers would have been welcome.