Razor.
Shaving and cutting the hair were looked upon as important means of treatment in several diseases. Oribasius (Med. Coll. xxv) has a chapter on this entitled περὶ κουρᾶς καὶ ξυρήσεως. ‘These things,’ he says, ‘have been introduced into medicine as a means of evacuation and as remedies in chronic diseases.’
Celsus makes frequent mention of shaving as a means of treatment. Of alopecia he says:
Sed nihil melius est quam novacula quotidie radere—quia, cum paulatim summa pellicula excisa est, adaperiuntur piloram radiculae. Neque ante oportet desistere quam frequentem pilum nasci apparuerit (VI. iv).
A large scalpel of this form from the Naples Museum is shown in [Pl. VI, fig. 1]. The handle is of the usual shape and is made of bronze. The blade is of steel. It measures 15 cm. all over, the blade being 2 cm. broad at the heel. The cutting border slopes backward to the back of the blade, which is in a straight line with the border of the handle. At the point the blade is 1·5 cm. broad. It may be noted that this instrument had much the same shape as the culter, but culter is not a term applied by any Latin author to a surgical instrument, nor is cultellus, although the sixteenth-century translators of Aetius and Paulus Aegineta very frequently use the latter term. Scultetus figures a scalpel of this form and sums up its uses well:
La fig. est un rasoir ou scalpel droit ne tranchant que d’un coste et de l’autre mousse, dont les chirurgiens se servent lorsqu’il ne faut avoir aucun égard aux parties sujettes, scavoir lorsqu’il s’agit de faire des incisions au cuir de la teste jusqu’au crane, &c.
Another specimen also of this class, but with the blade so long in proportion to its width as to deserve the name of a blunt-pointed bistoury was excavated in a third-century graveyard at Stree, and is now in the Charleroi Museum. It is 14 cm. long by 1 cm. broad at the heel, widening gradually towards the point where it is 2 mm. broader than at the heel. The end of the blade is square ([Pl. VI, fig. 2]). An example of the domestic culter or cultellus is shown in [Pl. VII, fig. 4]. It is from a Roman camp at Sandy in Bedfordshire.
In the curious pseudo-Hippocratic treatise (i. 463) a knife to fix on the thumb and dismember a foetus in utero is mentioned:
Ἔχειν δὲ χρὴ πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ ὄνυχα ἐπὶ τῷ δακτύλῳ τῷ μεγάλῳ. καὶ διελόντα ἐξενεγκεῖν τὰς χεῖρας κτλ.
‘If, however, the foetus be dead and remain, and cannot either spontaneously or with the aid of drugs come away in the natural manner, having liberally anointed the hand with cerate and inserted it in the uterus endeavour to separate the shoulders from the neck with the thumb. It is necessary to have for this a ‘claw’ upon the thumb and, the amputation having been performed, to extract the arms and, again inserting the hand, to open the abdomen and, having done so to remove the intestines, &c.’