Fun Fact: cicatrix

cicatrix

Anatomy def: Connective tissue remnants marking a healed sore or wound.

Outlander def: Horrific marks wielded by a lash with such fury as to permanently mar the beautiful back of a Scottish warrior!

Learn about cicatrices and how they form in Anatomy Lesson #37, ““Outlander Owies, Part 3 – Mars and Scars!”

Read about scars throughout Diana’s books. This great example from Dragonfly in Amber book showcases BJR’s handiwork!

The soap bubbles ran down across the wet, gleaming curves of his shoulders, and my hands followed them, spreading the slickness so that my fingers seemed to float on the surface of his skin. He was big, I thought. Near him so much, I tended to forget his size, until I saw him suddenly from a distance, towering among smaller men, and I would be struck anew by his grace and the beauty of his body. But he sat now with his knees nearly underneath his chin, and his shoulders filled the tub from one side to the other. He leaned forward slightly to assist my ministrations, exposing the hideous scars on his back. The thick red welts of Jack Randall’s Christmas gift lay heavily over the thin white lines of the earlier floggings.

See these sad cicatrices as Jamie sheds his shirt for cousin Jared, in Starz, episode 201, Through A Glass Darkly. Laying eyes on that battered back, Jared now regrets doubting Jamie’s loyalty to Scotland!

A deeply grateful,

Outlander Anatomist

Fun Fact: smallpox

smallpox

Anatomy def: An acute contagious viral disease characterized by fever and prolific pustules, leaving survivors with permanent scars.

Outlander def: Ship-burning plague rendering Claire and Jamie enemies of the Frenchie, Comte St. Germain! Oopsie!

Learn about smallpox in Anatomy Lesson #21, “Smallpox” or “The Devils Mark.”

Smallpox (one word) was first used as a term in 15th century Great Britain to distinguish it from syphilis, the “great pox.”

Read about smallpox in Diana Gabaldon’s second book, Dragonfly in Amber!

I approached him cautiously, … He was flushed with fever, his skin a queer dark red, scabbed thick with white pustules. … I sank to my knees by the sick man and opened his filthy shirt. … His arms were relatively clear, but the pustules clustered thickly down his chest and stomach, and his skin was burning to the touch. I had seen smallpox many times before, in the uncivilized parts of the world to which my uncle Lamb, an eminent archaeologist, had taken me during my early years. …“I’m afraid it is smallpox,” I said.

See sailors stricken with smallpox in Starz episode 201 “Through a Glass Darkly.” Wonderful special effects – raised lesions with small dimpled centers typifying smallpox lesions. Well done Outlander! yay!

a deeply grateful,

Outlander Anatomist