in salt was used in the
dye-mordant for leather. The clasps on the cases were made of brass. One
case was trimmed in gold leaf.

The most difficult item to analyze was the pen and ink drawing in black
and red of a bloodletting man purported to be a fifteenth-century specimen
(1480) from South Germany. The text is in German (Figure 25).

The watermark of the paper--a horned bull (ox) with crown--is believed to
have appeared in 1310 and was used widely for two hundred years. The paper
was heavily sized and no feathering of the black ink or red paint appears.

The paper fluoresced only faintly under ultraviolet light and much less
brightly than new paper, leading to the conclusion that the paper is not
modern. Various stains on the paper fluoresce yellow, which also indicates
a considerable history for the document.

The guard strip is vellum. Red stains on this strip may have been made by
blood.

The inks (brown and red) may have come from different sources or been
applied at different times because of their various compositions and
densities. Iron and lead were found in an area of writing on the left
foot. Iron is typical of an iron gall ink. Some of the lighter lines
contain graphite. The red lines contain mercury and lead suggesting a
mixture of vermilion and red lead.

Analysis of the ink and paper indicates that the document has had a varied
history and seems not to have been a deliberate production intended to
simulate age.

Catalog of Bloodletting Instruments

Several systems of catalog numbers have been employed for instruments in
the collections. The earliest instruments were originally collected by the
Division of Anthropology and were given a six-digit number in the division
catalog (referred to as "Anthropology"). Later objects in the collections
have been given a six-digit National Museum of History and Technology
(NMHT) accession number, which serves for all items obtained from one
source at a given date. Before 1973, the Division of Medical Sciences used
a system of numbering individual items by M numbers (e.g., "M-4151").
Since 1973, individual items have been distinguished by adding decimal
numbers to the accession numbers (e.g., "308730.10"). Objects on loan have
been marked as such and given a six-digit number. Other institutional
abbreviations are as follows: SI = Smithsonian Institution; USNM = the
former United States National Museum; NLM = National Library of Medicine.

[Illustra