Memoirs of a Mercenary

These are the reminiscences of Johann Dietz, a German barber-surgeon of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He describes a hard childhood, apprenticeship in Halle, work as a field surgeon with Brandenburg troops on the Hungarian campaign and at the siege of Buda, and later service that takes him to sea with whalers in Arctic waters. Returning, he fights the guild for the right to keep a shop, becomes a court barber, and records the daily trade of bleeding, shaving, and dressing wounds. The book is an artisan's autobiography of war, craft, and town politics, not a history of the Great Elector.

Bound in lilac cloth lithographed in black with a wrap-around contemporary etching in grey. Lilac page tops. Pale lilac flecked endleaves. Pale grey slipcase.