Surgical instruments in Greek and Roman times / by John Stewart Milne.

  • Milne, John Stewart, 1871-
Date:
1907
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Surgical instruments in Greek and Roman times / by John Stewart Milne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    the cranial bones when the child's head is broken up in cephalotripsy. It is, however, a sequestrum forceps. Uterine Curette. Hippocrates (ed. Van der Linden, vol. ii, p. 394) says : If the menses form thrombi ... we must wind the skin of a vulture or a piece of vellum round a curette and curette the OS uteri (kclI irepl ^varpav Tre/neiAi^a? yvirbs hippa rj vpiiva, hia^veiv to <rr6p.a tG>v [xrjTpioiv). £vo-Tpa may of course mean the strigil, and some forms of strigil, such as the one shown in PL XXV, fig. 1, are not ill adapted for the purpose. Instrument for destroying foetus in utero. Greek, kp.^pvoo-^aKTr]<s ; Latin, aeneum spiculum. Apart from the destruction of the foetus in criminal abortion, which was so common at Rome in the time of the Empire, we have mention of an instrument for legitimately producing the death of the foetus from humane motives before forced delivery. It is mentioned by Tertullian in his sermon De Anima, and the passage is so interesting that I give it in full. It is, moreover, an example of the unexpected places in which information regarding the surgery of the ancients crops up. Tertullian is arguing that the foetus is alive in utero, and does not, as others hold, simply take on life in the act of birth, and to support his conclusions he uses the following argument: Denique et mortui eduntur quomodo, nisi et vivi ? qui autem et mortui, nisi qui prius vivi? Atquin et in ipso adhuc utero infans trucidatur necessaria crudelitate, quum ! in exitu obliquatus denegat partum; matricida, ni mori- turus. Itaque et inter arma medicorum et organon est, quo prius patescere secreta coguntur tortili temperamento, cum anulo cultrato, quo intus membra caeduntur anxio arbitrio, cum hebete unco, quo totum facinus extrahitur I violento puerperio. Est etiam aeneum spiculum, quo iugu- { latio ipsa dirigitur caeco latrocinio ; l\i^pvoa(\>aKTr\v appellant I de infanticidii officio, utique viventis infantis peremptorium. | Hoc et Hippocrates habuit et Asclepiades et Erasistratus et