CHAPTER II
MATERIAL, EXECUTION, AND ORNAMENTATION
Steel and Iron.
The surgical instruments we meet with are, as a rule, of bronze. Not that the Greeks and Romans did not make many of their instruments of iron and steel, but the iron has mainly perished while more of the bronze has persisted. Long before the date of the earliest medical writings, Greece had passed into the iron age. The Homeric poems picture a civilization in the state of transition from a bronze to an iron period, and weapons such as sword, axe, and spear, are frequently described as made of iron. In the Iliad we even read of implements of agriculture made of iron, but it is ‘hard to work’ (πολύκμητος, Iliad vi. 48, Od. xxi. 10). However, by the time that Hippocrates wrote, it was in common use, and, if we had only the evidence of the Hippocratic writings to go by, we could see that it was in common use in the time of Hippocrates. Certain instruments, such as the cautery, are always spoken of as made of iron, in fact, the term for cautery is, as a rule, ‘the iron,’ and σίδηρος ὁ ὀξύς is a general term for ‘the knife’. The smelting of iron is even used as a simile by Hippocrates:
‘In the same way iron comes from stones and earth burnt together. In the first exposure to the fire stones and earth mix together with scoria, but at the second and third burning the scoria separate themselves from the iron, and this phenomenon meets the eye, that the iron remains in the fire fallen apart from the scoria, and becomes solid and compact’ (ii. 371).
Again, he uses as a simile a speculative theory as to the way in which heating iron softens it and dipping it in water hardens it. He believes that this comes about by the fire depriving the iron of its nourishing substance, while the addition of water restores it.
Σιδήρου ὄργανα τέχνης· τὸν σίδηρον περιτήκουσι, πνεύματι ἀναγκάζοντες τὸ πῦρ, τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν τροφὴν ἀφαιρέοντες, ἀραιὸν δὲ ποιήσαντες, παίουσι καὶ συνελαύνουσιν. ὕδατος δὲ ἄλλου τροφῇ ἰσχυρὸν γίνεται (ii. 641).
‘The instruments of ironworking soften iron by driving the fire with wind and taking away the supporting substance, and when they have rarefied it they strike and beat it. By the nourishment of water it is again strengthened.’
This is the earliest reference to tempering steel by the Greeks with which I am acquainted. It is a curious commentary on the relative destruction of iron instruments compared with those of bronze, that cauteries, which are always described as made of iron and which must have existed in enormous numbers, are among the rarest surgical instruments found. We have a few cauteries of iron, however, and some knives and knife-blades and other instruments remain. Pots for ointments of certain kinds were made of iron, and we have actually two of these which had been the property of a Roman oculist whose full name is known. I have entered into this discussion because there seems to be a general tendency to underestimate the extent to which iron was employed by the Greeks and Romans. The quantity of scoria left by the primitive founders should alone be sufficient to teach us to how great an extent iron was in use. Wherever there was good iron in any of the Roman provinces, veritable mountains of scoria are found. The heaps of scoria left in the Forest of Dean by the Roman founders contained such a large percentage of iron still remaining that they were smelted over again in later times, and to do this occupied over twenty furnaces for a couple of centuries. Tolouse calculated that similar heaps in Gaul contained over 120,000 tons of scoria. If, however, we tend to underestimate the extent to which iron was in use among the Greeks and Romans, still more, I believe, do we tend to underrate the quantity and the quality of the steel available in those times. This comes about from the fact that in our day we require such enormous quantities of iron and steel that we have to employ iron ores of a very low quality. The greater part of the so-called steel of which battleships are made is got from a ferruginous mud with only 30 per cent. of iron, less than there was left in the scoria after the Roman founder had done with it. To the impurities already existing in this we add others, because the coal we use contains sulphur. It is getting rid of these impurities that makes the production of steel such a roundabout process with us. We forget that, with primitive methods but fine ores and a fuel devoid of sulphur, the production of steel of fine quality is as easy a process as the manufacture of iron, in fact the only difference between the method of procuring iron and steel under these circumstances is the length of time the process is allowed to go on. The ancient founders used the finest ores, often containing 75 per cent. of iron, and, working with charcoal fuel, which was nearly pure carbon, they could produce steel as easily as iron. The difference between steel and iron is that steel contains carbon, and, by allowing the ore to remain longer in contact with the charcoal, steel is formed, so that a founder setting out to make iron with a pure ore and a pure fuel like charcoal, may, if he is not careful, turn out steel of fine quality. This primitive method of making steel is still in vogue in India, Burma, Borneo, China, &c., and very fine qualities of steel are produced. The majority of the tools found in the earliest Greek colonies on the Nile—Naukratis and Daphnae—are of steel or iron, although those of the Egyptians among whom they were living (circa 600 B. C.) were of bronze. The classical medical writings themselves are sufficient evidence of the quality of the steel available in those times. Galen (ii. 683) says that the best quality of steel (which came from Norica) yielded a knife which neither blunted easily nor bent or chipped.