SILVER WIRE

UNDERSTANDING SURGERY AND BIOETHICS THROUGH EMBROIDERY AND COMICS

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

Page 6 of Silver Wire. I decided to
use soft colors for a hard topic.
Author: Kriota Willberg

Since my artist residency at the New York Academy of Medicine Library, I have been thinking a lot about the way I tend to be more interested or open to an intimidating subject if I have a connection to it though previous experience or knowledge. One thing that researching the histories of domestic sewing and of sutures and ligatures has taught me is that sewing was a universal skill for millennia. These days it may not be as common a skill, but practically everyone understands what it is and the basic techniques and equipment used.

My new comic, Silver Wire, explores the histories of surgery, unethical research, and slavery, by using embroidery as the medium for gaining a little more understanding of these very intimidating subjects. In the narrative, I go to the park with my doctor-friend Mollie for a lesson about surgery and suturing techniques. As we wound and sew up fruit, we explore the histories of medical sewing and decorative sewing, gossiping and joking about the great surgeons of history. But the same techniques that Mollie uses with her patients to relieve their suffering have a dark history that affects us all. 

Yes – my interests in embroidery and history changed my life by giving me a way to wrap my head around the debt global modern medicine owes to the American enslaved! I tear up just thinking about it.

Making this book really honed my understanding of the need for studying history to reconcile ourselves with the present. The following appears on the inside back cover of the book:

Silver Wire page 16.
Author: Kriota Willberg

You know, the New York Academy of Medicine Library changed my life. One day in the Rare Book Room I was reading an introduction by Charles Bell to one of his books (I forget which one.) In it, he addressed the reader and praised them for their curiosity and interest in medicine. He was inspired by his patients and his students who were “young men of science” or something like that. The guy was truly devoted to education. His language was so enthusiastic and welcoming, I felt like he was talking to me, specifically. At the end of the page, he wrote that through a shared interest in science, we are all comrades. His signature began with “Your friend…” 

I am pretty sure that Charles Bell, at the end of the 18^thcentury, had no idea that a middle aged, childless, cis-gendered female, massage therapist, cartoonist(!) would read his words and then struggle to keep back her tears of gratitude, but that is what happened. I hope Bell would be pleased.

History is full of love, suffering, service, and cruelty, sometimes all coming from the same source. By weeding through the culture and politics of medicine of the past, we can understand and improve the state of public health today. 

We need voices like Bell, Boivin*, Trota**, yes, and even (that asshole***) Sim’s to be heard, discussed, and acted upon to help us understand the present with some anger and a lot of compassion for people suffering today. We need the past to make a better future.

If you made it through this book and all the crazy citations and comments, thank you! Please consider me…

…Your Friend,

Kriota

*You probably never heard of her, look her up!

**If you’re one of those people who say she didn’t exist, then replace her name with someone she may represent to you.

***J. Marion Sims was a gynecological surgeon who experimented on enslaved women in the 1840s. His work is a major component of the book. And he was an asshole. His memoir is a huge ego trip where he talks about how touching women’s reproductive organs is the last thing he ever wanted to do. Oh yeah, there’s also the unethical research!

Page 20 of Silver Wire.
Lace and embroidery over an illustration of
"the Sim's position" from a 1876
surgical textbook by Henry Savage.

Silver Wire is a 19-page comic book followed by a whopping 8 pages of citations, notes, and pictures of medically themed embroidery. 

You can read it on Medium.com (after July 8) and if you want your very own copy, order it from Birdcage Bottom Books or find it at Forbidden Planet or JHU Comics in New York City, or Chicago Comics or Quimby’s in Chicago. 

P.S. (Get your butt to the library!)