During the many operations I have seen over the past three years I often see old and damaged tissue. The surgeon has to deal with it's fragility and it's unpredictable behaviour and has to know what can be salvaged.
When I get home I start to think of where in my life that I have to do something similar and naturally I think of clothes. I mend all my clothes, mostly linen dresses that wear thin across the hips and under the arms. I darn them, darn them again and then patch behind the darns as the fabric thins in wider and wider areas. Sometimes I have to piece in a whole new section because I know that there is nothing more to be done with the disintegrating cloth. During the medieval and early modern periods we know that linen clothing was cut down to children's clothes when the main areas wore out. Eventually the rags would be used for char cloth and then fertiliser for the next flax crop.
Most people now do not wear linen clothes all day but they do wear jersey t-shirts and there is a similar comparison. Here is a general timeline for a t-shirt wearing out and it is similar to a human!
1.fading and sagging
2.frays around the neck
3.thins under the arms and down the front
4.small holes appear and when held up to the light you see that there are many pin point holes,
5.you put your finger through it one morning
What can be mended is down to experience and the discernment of the mender. Are you fixing a seam that has broken or are you dealing with systemic damage?
The image above is from the Epiploic Cube and was inspired by the patched and darned areas of the Bayeux tapestry and a 17th C. embroidered nightgown. The colour was chosen because the blueish brown is often used in medical illustrations from the 18th C.
It turns out that this side provokes the strongest reactions of revulsion from surgeons when handling the cube!
