Ancient painting reveals leg transplant 1,500 years ago

A team of Italian researchers has discovered the earliest evidence of leg transplant surgery in a 14th-century painting, revealing the ambitions of doctors more than 1,500 years ago.

A 14th-century painting depicting a leg transplant 1,500 years ago. Photo: North Carolina Museum of Art.

Created by an artist named Matteo di Pacino, the work, which is on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, USA, dates back to the 14th century. The painting illustrates the story of a 5th-century man with a leg disease who was treated with a transplant.

"Historical documents describe the event that happened in 474 as a miracle," Seeker quoted researcher Antonio Perciaccante working in the internal medicine department of Gorizia hospital, Italy.

According to history, Saints Cosmas and Damian were two doctors who converted to Christianity and treated patients in the Roman province of Syria. They cut off the patient’s leg and replaced it with a healthy leg taken from a deceased Ethiopian man. They then placed the amputated leg in the Ethiopian man’s coffin.

Perciaccante and his colleagues carefully examined the painting and discovered that the patient's leg had a strange disease. "The amputated leg appeared swollen, soft, and putrefied, with some skin lesions. Based on these features, we speculate that the man had gangrene of the right leg due to an infectious disease," the authors concluded in their study published in the journal Vascular Surgery.

According to an 18th-century book on the lives of the saints, the patient was most likely the caretaker of a church patronized by Saints Cosmas and Damian.

Whether the treatment was successful or not, the story illustrated in the painting shows that doctors of the time considered amputation to be the best treatment for gangrene and the concept of organ transplantation was already in their minds.

The researchers believe that doctors in the 5th century may have attempted to transplant the amputated leg. However, due to biological incompatibility, the transplanted leg was rejected by the recipient's body and their efforts failed.

According to VNE