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

  • Milne, John Stewart, 1871-
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

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)

    53/316 (page 37)
    In Soranns (Bib. II. xviii. par. 59, p. 359, ed. Bose) there occurs mention of an instrument for puncturing the membranes where they do not rupture spontaneously : Xopiov be jJiT] ava<TTOfioviJL€vop KCLTiabi Ttpoo-eyovT&s bicupeLV ri baKTvkio irpoKOLkavavTa ri /txepoy. The Latin version of Moschion has: Folliculum verum non ruptum ante digito impresso formantes locum phlebotomo sollicite dividimus omnibus praedictis post encymatismis utimur (xviii. 10, p. 83, ed. [Rose). However, we cannot accept this as conclusive evidence that the katias was the same as the phlebotome, as I have already pointed out that this version of Moschion is a late retranslation into Latin of a G-reek translation of the original Moschion. While the meagre references to the katias point to its having been a similar instrument to the phlebotome, it is by no means certain that the instruments were identical. The next writer who notices the instru- ment is Aretaeus, who mentions it in the cure of headaches (Cur. Morb. Diut. i. 2): ' We abstract blood from the nostrils, and for this purpose push into them a long instrument named Kareidbwv, or the one called the scoop' (Topvvq). In a note to his edition of Celsus, Lee says Aretaeus ' invented an instrument having at the end a blade of grass, or made like a blade of grass, which was thrust into the nostrils to excite an haemorrhage in some affections of the head. This instrument is named KaTtiahiov, from Kara and da a blade of grass \ I have shown, however, that Soranus, who wrote a century before Aretaeus, used the term, and a comparison of the various forms in which the word appears seems to me to point rather to a connexion with KaOCrj^t, one meaning of which is ' to let blood \ The next writer who mentions it is Aetius (II. iii. 2, and again II. iv. 14), where he refers to