CHAPTER VIII
BONE AND TOOTH INSTRUMENTS
Raspatory.
Greek, ξυστήρ; Latin, scalper excisorius, scalper medicinalis.
The raspatory or rugine consists of a blade of varying shape fixed at right angles to the shaft, and it is operated by pulling instead of by being driven forwards by striking or pushing. Although no ancient raspatory has been preserved to us we are quite familiar with the instrument, as it has been in continuous use throughout ancient and mediaeval times, and it is in use at the present day. The raspatory is the instrument upon which Hippocrates relies for eradicating fissured and contused bone in injury to the skull:
‘If you cannot discover whether the bone is broken or contused, or both the one and the other, nor can see the truth of the matter, you must dissolve black ointment and fill the wound with the solution, and apply a linen rag smeared with oil, and then a poultice of maza with a bandage; and on the next day, having cleaned out the wound, scrape the bone with the raspatory (ἐπιξύσαι). And if the bone is not sound but fractured and contused, the rest of the bone will be white when scraped, but the fracture and contusion, having imbibed the preparation, will appear black, while the rest of the bone is white. And you must again scrape more deeply the bone where it appears black, and if you thus remove the contusion and cause it to disappear you may conclude that there has been a contusion of the bone to a greater or less extent, which has occasioned the fracture that has disappeared under the raspatory’ (ὑπὸ τοῦ ξυστῆρος) (iii. 366).
From Galen we learn that there were different sizes and shapes of the raspatory (x. 445):
‘In simple fissure reaching to the second plate narrow raspatories are used, and they should be of different sizes to suit all cases. The affected bone being exposed secundum artem, first the broader ones are to be used, then the smaller down to the narrowest. The narrowest are to be used in the diploe.’