The Celestial Figures
The Bloodletting Man
How an older medicine reasoned, drawn on the wall.
- Work
- from a physician’s almanac
- Maker
- German woodcut, maker unknown
- Date
- c. 1550
- Source
- Wellcome Collection, London
Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A standing man is ringed by the twelve zodiac signs, lines running from each to the part of the body it was held to govern — the 'Zodiac Man,' or homo signorum, printed in almanacs and physicians' handbooks for centuries. Cutting or bleeding a patient was timed by which sign the moon stood in; this diagram was the ready-reference for that rule. This woodcut version comes from the practical medicine of the sixteenth century, where astrology and the surgery of the body were simply the same subject. Presented here as history: a picture of how an older medicine reasoned, hung on the wall for what it shows, not what it claims.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Bloodletting Man printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from a physician’s almanac (1550), held by Wellcome Collection, London. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
Attribution: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
