Antique Medical Instruments

Family physician and artist Dr. C. Keith Wilber presents a hand-illustrated tour of medical history via the doctors' instruments. This study chronicles the evolution of a wide range of medical instruments from the mid-1700s through current usage. It includes discussions on microscopes, reflex hammers, stethoscopes, blood pressure instruments, electro-cardiographs, ophthalmoscopes, otoscopes, endoscopes, vaginal specula, thermometers, forceps, bullet probes, bloodletting instruments, vaccination lancets, trepanning tools, and others. This is an important resource for all medical personnel, historians, and collectors.

Illustrates the design and development of medical, surgical, and dental instruments, functional aids, medicine receptacles, and infant and invalid feeding utensils from the Middle Ages to 1870

Historians have examined the development of surgical techniques and of the surgical profession itself, but have paid scant attention to the tools that made surgery. Surgeon and historian Kirkup (honorary curator, Royal College of Surgeons, UK) demonstrates how surgical instruments as sophisticated as ultrasound or lasers began as teeth, mouth, fists, fingernails, and fingers. Far from being a compendium drawn from instrument catalogs, this volume is a masterpiece of scholarship. The instruments are situated in the surgical theory and practice of their times. Kirkup's skill and devotion in his presentation and description raise the work from a register to a natural history of the instruments. (The only caveat is that some pictures are not for the squeamish.) An extensive bibliography and an excellent index add to the book's value.