An instrument answering to this description is still in use by veterinary surgeons ([Pl. VII, fig. 1]), but the forefinger, and not the thumb, is used. A scalpel blade is mounted on a ring and the forefinger is passed through the ring. Foals and calves are in this way easily dismembered in exactly the same way as is described by Hippocrates. The name of the instrument of Hippocrates would rather indicate that its blade was curved, but as the modern instrument has a probe point I have included it in this class. It is called by Tertullian the ‘ring knife’—‘cum annulo cultrato (var. lect. anulocultro) quo intus membra caeduntur anxio arbitrio’ (De Anima, 26).

I.B (a) Straight blade cutting on two edges, sharp-pointed.
(1) Galen’s ‘long’ dissecting knife.
(2) Phlebotome.
(3) Lithotome.
(4) Polypus knife.

Galen’s knife for opening the vertebral canal.

In his description of the dissection of the spine Galen describes a large straight two-edged knife (ii. 682):

Καθίημι τὸ πρόμηκες μαχαίριον, οὕτω γὰρ αὐτὸ καλῶ δύο πλευρὰς ὀξείας ἔχον ἐπὶ τοῦ πέρατος εἰς μίαν κορυφὴν ἀνηκοῦσας.

‘I push in the ‘long scalpel’, for thus I describe the one with two cutting edges meeting in one at the tip.’

What Galen means by πρόμηκες when applied to an instrument he has himself explained in a note on the chapter by Hippocrates on the treatment of dislocation of the shoulder. He applies it to instruments long in proportion to their breadth (see [p. 118]). The knife referred to here is a large strong instrument, for it is intended for cutting through the lateral processes of the vertebrae.

Phlebotome.

Greek, φλεβοτόμον, τὸ (sc. σμιλίον), also φλεβοτόμος, ὁ (Galen). ὀξυβελές (sc. ὄργανον); Latin, phlebotomum (late), scalpellus.

Although venesection is one of the most frequently mentioned operations, and although the phlebotome is one of the most frequently named instruments, we have no passage giving even the most meagre description of this instrument. It is assumed that its appearance would be familiar to every one, since phlebotomy was so common. Celsus tells us that every one old and young was bled.