The head wounds identified in the forensic analysis match aspects of contemporary accounts. The Welsh poet Guto’r Glyn, writing a eulogy for Rhys ap Thomas shortly after the battle, included an allusion to the head being “shaved” — a possible reference to the kind of scalp wounds visible on the skeleton. A contemporary account in the *Croyland Chronicle* described Richard fighting “manfully in the thickest press of his enemies,” which is consistent with a man who had ridden into the midst of hostile forces.
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## The Medieval Medical Tradition and Scoliosis
The idiopathic adolescent scoliosis found in the Leicester skeleton was identified through X-ray and direct examination of the vertebral column. The curvature was severe enough to be immediately apparent to the osteologists, and the assessment of “idiopathic adolescent” rather than congenital was based on the pattern of vertebral deformity and the fact that the bones showed changes consistent with a curvature that developed during growth rather than one present from birth.
In medieval medical understanding, there was no precise equivalent to the modern diagnostic category of idiopathic adolescent scoliosis. The condition would have been understood through a framework that mixed observation of the body’s appearance with humoral theory — the idea that health and physical constitution were determined by the balance of four fundamental substances (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile). A person with an asymmetric body might be described in terms of their constitutional type or their birth circumstances, rather than as having a specific spinal pathology.
What medieval observers could have seen, had they examined Richard III’s body, was what the osteologists saw on the skeleton: one shoulder clearly higher than the other, the torso visibly asymmetric, the spine curved when viewed from behind or from the side. Contemporary accounts of his appearance varied in how prominently they featured this characteristic, but Rous’s description of “unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower” is the kind of specific, observable detail that could have been recorded by anyone who saw Richard in life or in death.