Ancient Surgical Instruments.
Bramhilla, surgeon to Francis II. of Austria, said that surgical instruments were invented by Tubal Cain, because the Bible says he was “the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”
The saw is a tool of great antiquity. Pliny attributes its invention to Dædalus, or to his nephew Perdix, who was also called Talos; he was supposed to have imitated it from the jaw of a serpent, with which he had been able to cut a piece of wood. The invention of forceps was attributed to Vulcan and the Cyclopes. When used for extracting teeth, the Greeks called them ὀδοντάγρα; for extracting arrow-heads and other weapons from the wounded in battle, the particular form employed was called ἀρδιοθήρα.
In the collection of domestic objects discovered by M. Petrie in the Egyptian ruins of Kahun, flint saws close upon 5,000 years old may be seen.[538]
Pincers and tweezers are made by the natives of Timor-laut from the bamboo; they are used for pulling out the hair from the face. The natives of the Darling River, New South Wales, use fine bone needles for boring through the septum of the nose.
The book on Wounds of the Head is admitted by the best critics to be a genuine work of Hippocrates. We find in that treatise that he used the trepan, as he speaks of a σμικρὸν τρύπανον, a small trepan. There must also have been a larger one, a πρίων, or saw, which had a περίοδος, or circular motion, and which was probably the trephine, and a πρίων χαραcτός, or jagged saw, which is held to be the trepan; and he gives instructions to the operator to withdraw the instrument frequently and cool both it and the bone with cold water, and to exercise all vigilance not to wound the living membrane.[539]
Splints were used by the Greeks for fractured limbs; they were called νάρθηκας. Cutting for the stone is spoken of in the Ὅρκος, which is attributed to Hippocrates. Celsus describes lithotrity, or crushing the stone by the instrument invented by Ammonios the λιθοτόμος, i.e. lithotomist.
Asclepiades practised tracheotomy. Many surgical instruments have been discovered in Herculaneum and Pompeii. There is a speculum vaginæ with two branches and a travelling yoke for them driven by a screw, and a speculum ani opening by pressure on the handles; there is a forceps of curious construction for removing pieces of bone from the surface of the brain in cases of fracture of the skull. Mr. Cockayne says:[540]—
“It has been specially considered by Prof. Benedetto Vulpes [1847], who thinks it may also have been intended to take up an artery. The Greeks, he observes, as appears by an inscription dug up near Athens, were able to tie an artery in order to stop hæmorrhage, and words implying so much are found in a treatise of Archigenes (A.D. 100), existing in MS. in the Laurentian library at Florence, ‘the vessels carrying (blood) towards the incision must be tied or sewed up.’ Near the end of the sixteenth century a French surgeon was the first to recover the ligature of the artery, and the instrument he used was very similar to the forceps in the Museum at Naples.”
A curious pair of forceps has also been found, without a parallel among modern surgical instruments; the blades have a half turn, and the grip is toothed and spoon-shaped when closed. By construction it is suited for introduction into some internal cavity, and for holding firm and fast some excrescence there. Professor Vulpes finds it well calculated for dealing with the excrescences which grow upon the Schneiderian membrane covering the nasal bones, or such as come on the periphery of the anus, or the orifice of the female urethra; especially such as having a large base cannot be tied.[541]