Surgical instruments in Greek and Roman times / by John Stewart Milne.
- Milne, John Stewart, 1871-
- Date:
- 1907
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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![maiorum quoque prosector Herophilus et mitior ipse Soranus, certi animal esse conceptum, atque ita miserti infelicissimae huiusmodi infantiae, ut prius occidatur ne viva lanietur. ' Finally there are cases of children that are dead when they are born, how so unless they have also lived? For who are dead unless they have previously been alive ? And yet, an infant is sometimes by an act of necessary cruelty destroyed when yet in the womb, when owing to an oblique presentation at birth delivery is made impossible and the child would cause the death of the mother unless it were doomed itself to die. And accordingly there is among the appliances of medical men an instrument by which the private parts are dilated with a priapiscus worked by a screw, and also a ring-knife whereby the limbs are cut off in the womb with judicious care, and a blunt hook by which the whole mass is extracted and a violent form of delivery in this way effected. There is also a bronze stylet with which a secret death is inflicted; they call it the €i^l3pvoa(f)dKTr]9 (foeticide) from its use in infanticide, as being fatal to a living infant. Hippocrates had this (instrument), Asclepiades and Erasistratus, and of the ancients also Herophilus the anatomist, and Soranus, a man of gentler character. Who, being assured that a living thing had been conceived, mercifully judged that an unfortunate infant of this sort should be destroyed before birth to save it from being mangled alive.' We have here apparently a different instrument from the embryotome, which we saw was a form of knife. This is a pointed spike-shaped instrument. It must have had much the shape of one of the huge bodkins in the Naples Museum (PL LI, fig. 1). Apparatus for fumigating the Uterus and Vagina. Fumigation formed an important part of the treatment of all varieties of disease of the uterus and vagina. The notion that the uterus was an animal within the body which could wander about on its own initiative and which was attracted by pleasant smells and repelled by disagree- able smells, was responsible for much of the treatment of gynaecological diseases by the ancients. To make a fumi-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21274150_0174.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
