Horrific injury that ’caused Jesus Christ’s death’ on the cross shared by doctor

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Whilst Monty Python's Life of Brian may have joked that 'at least it gets you out in the open air', there's no denying that crucifixion is a thoroughly unpleasant way to die.

The method would have been both an execution and making a public example of someone, with the final grisly fate of victims on public display.

Being nailed to a piece of wood and left out in the hot sun leaves no shortage of options as to what could be a victim's final cause of death, including dehydration, blood loss, sepsis, internal bleeding, or organ failure.

Some victims would have been tied up instead of being nailed which would have only prolonged the agony, whereas in others the weight of their body may have made it impossible to breathe.

So with this grisly range of options available, which could have been the most likely to have spelled the end for Jesus, at least temporarily?

Doctor-turned-priest Patrick Pullicino has now put forward his theory for this question in Catholic Medical Quarterly.

Jesus' injuries during his execution are well documented, including both the nails through his hands, though in fact nails were usually driven through the wrists so the stronger bones would support the weight, as well as his feet, and finally the spear that was driven into him by a Roman soldier.

The Bible also details how Jesus fell while carrying the cross to his place of execution.

The Rev Prof Pullicino believes that Jesus may have died as a result of complications from a shoulder wound and from being stretched out on the cross.

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He is not the first person to try and get to the bottom of Jesus' medical cause of death. Twelfth century cistercian monk St Bernard of Clairvaux tells of a supposed encounter with Jesus, where he asks what injuries went unrecorded in his torment, to which Jesus supposedly replied by describing a wound to his shoulder.

Rev Prof Pullicino bases his evidence from the controversial Turin Shroud, and in particular from analysis of the shoulder position.

He postulated that when Jesus was crucified, his being stretched would have ruptured the subclavian artery, which is a pair of large arteries in the thorax that carry blood to the head, neck, shoulder and arms.

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There is also a possible explanation for why 'blood and water' poured out of Jesus' body.

The blood could have built up in the cavity between the ribcage and the lungs, around three pints of it, while the 'water' could have been cerebrospinal fluid, which has a translucent appearance.

“Because of this right arm stretching, the right subclavian/axillary artery was also subjected to stretch, as it was one of the only remaining intact structures connecting the body and the right arm," the Telegraph reports Pullicino argued.

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“Transferring of body weight to the arms in inspiration is likely to have caused further stretching of the right subclavian artery. Transferring weight to the legs in exhalation would reverse this stretch.

“This would cause the stretched subclavian artery to move across the rib surface with each breath and its underside would be subject to friction.

“This paper postulates that over the course of three hours, the subclavian artery became abraded, injured and its wall attenuated until finally the artery ruptured and profuse bleeding ensued.”

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