There are several files of steel in the Naples Museum which are classed among the surgical instruments. Many Roman files of steel which have been found in London are now in the Guildhall Museum. Some of these have transverse edges like our own files. Other extant specimens have coarse frets on them, like our wood rasps. [Pl. XLII. fig. 1] shows one in the Guildhall collection, which is of the rasp variety.
Forceps for extracting Weapons.
Greek, βελουλκόν (sc. ὄργανον).
Paul has a most interesting chapter on the extraction of weapons, and in it he mentions a special instrument for extracting weapons, evidently a forceps:
‘If the head of the weapon has fixed in the flesh, it is to be drawn out with the hands, or by laying hold of the appendage which is called the shaft, if it has not fallen off. This part is commonly made of wood. When it has fallen off we make the extraction by means of a tooth forceps, or a stump forceps, or a forceps for extracting weapons (βελουλκοῦ), or any other convenient instrument. And sometimes we make an incision in the flesh around it in the first place, if the wound do not admit the instrument’ (VI. lxxxvii).
It is true that etymologically we are only entitled to translate βελουλκοῦ by ‘weapon-extractor’, but its association with the other two forceps shows pretty conclusively that a forceps is meant, and Celsus says weapons are to be extracted with the forceps under similar conditions. In the picture of Aeneas wounded, found in a house at Stabiae and now in the Naples Museum, the surgeon, Iapix, is engaged in extracting a weapon from the wound in the thigh of the hero. The instrument he is using is a long forceps with crossed legs ([Pl. XLIV]).
Periosteal Elevator for the Pericranium.
Greek, ὑποσπαθιστήρ, σπαθιστήρ.
The hypospathister was an elevator for separating the pericranium from the calvarium. It gave the name to a formidable operation in which it was used, viz. hypospathismus. This operation is described by Galen, Aetius, and Paul, by the latter (VI. vi) best of all. Paul is the only one who mentions the instrument by name. The operation consisted in making three vertical incisions, one down each side of the forehead and one down the centre. Next the skin was raised along with the pericranium from the whole of the front of the forehead with the hypospathister (ὑποσπαθιστήρ), and the vessels lying in the raised flaps were subcutaneously divided by a knife passed under them, with its back to the skull. The elevator by which the pericranium was separated is called by Paul ὑποσπαθιστήρ. The operation is mentioned by Epiphanius, a bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, by whom the instrument is referred to as σπαθιστήρ.
Impellent.