At first glance this intriguing image shows the imposing figure of General Guan Yu (later deified as Kuan Kung, the Chinese God of War) engrossed in playing the board game Go, and seeming to dwarf the onlookers and the opponent who is dithering over his next move. But look more closely and see the slight and almost incidental figure of the venerated Chinese surgeon, Hua T'o (died AD 208), who is equally engrossed in performing a surgical operation on a battle wound in the general's right arm, while a quailing young assistant holds a bowl to catch the blood. As the 14th-century writer Luo Guanzhong tells us, in his 'Romance of Three Kingdoms': "When the knife went over the surface of the bone and made horrible sounds, all those near covered their eyes and turned pale."

Hua T'o is credited with perfecting a general anaesthetic known as mafeisan. Guan Yu, like any self-respecting hero, chose to forego it and opted to distract himself from the pain by playing Go instead.

This Japanese woodcut by Kuniyoshi, published in 1853, is just one of the treasures uncovered in the first few months of the Wellcome Library Iconographic Cataloguing Project. Along with some 10 000 other uncatalogued images, it has, until now, languished in tantalising obscurity. The project team of Anna Kisby, Barbara Lasic and Jemma Street is diligently creating entries for these pictures in the Wellcome Library's web catalogue, to bring them to the world's attention at last.

See also

• Iconographic Collections in the Wellcome Library, including cataloguing details