My project examines how early modern Netherlandish and German artists depicted commonplace illnesses and surgical procedures. In addition to helping us understand the experiences of early modern patients, these non-scientific images produced and disseminated knowledge about the human body and its symptoms that “learned” medicine and surgery rarely recorded. I situate these genre scenes in the broader context of how medical knowledge circulated in non-professional communities. Tracing these developments, I argue for the rise of egalitarian medical epistemology in Northern European art that complemented and intersected with the visual discourses of academic anatomy and pathology. At HAB, I focus on consolation books, herbal treatises and pamphlets, and self-help manuals on health and illness meant for non-specialists. I also study travel writing about the East Indies, which documents the early dynamics between Western and indigenous medical practices.