Surgical Instruments In Greek And Roman Times

This is a very scholarly work that the author prefaces by explaining the Latin and Greek writings which are sources of his information. He tells us that both cultures had many, many kinds of different surgical instruments many of them made of iron and bronze. They also had instruments made of steel, since in those ancient days pure iron ore and good quality charcoal were abundant, thus allowing the making of steel.

In The Tools of Asclepius Lawrence Bliquez provides a comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of the surgical instruments and paraphernalia used by Greco-Roman pharmacists, physicians and surgeons.

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Excerpt from Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times Others of the Greek texts have not been reprinted since the sixteenth century, and bristle with the ingenious but at first perplexing shorthand contractions with which the Renaissance typographer imitated the Compendia of the manuscripts. These difficulties can be got over with patience, however, and the waste of gray matter necessary as a preliminary is not out of proportion to the results to be obtained. Even as a quarry for philological materials the medical classics are far from being worked out, and it is surprising how many words one meets with which are not to be found in the best greek-english dictionaries. The method pursued in the present investigation was to make a complete examination of the classical medical, surgi cal, anatomical, and pharmaceutical writings which have been preserved to us, copying out the portions in which an instru ment was mentioned. These extracts were then rearranged in ledger form, each extract being classified under the heading of the instrument it referred to. Out of the enormous number of references thus obtained, those passages were selected which seemed to throw any light on the shape and size of the instrument to which they referred. Next, an examination was made of the reports of finds in various localities; as many specimens in various museums were examined as possible; and annotations of classical texts were searched for any further information they might give. The total information thus gained is so arranged that under the heading of each instrument will be found a series of selected extracts from different authors, with the deductions from them which it is possible to make regarding the appearance of the instrument, and an illustration is given of it from some ancient specimen where such is in existence. Failing actual ancient specimens, I have fallen back on mediaeval or ancient Arabian authors for illustration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times. It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, after many years, back in print. This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by John Stewart Milne, which is now, at last, again available to you. Get the PDF and EPUB NOW as well. Included in your purchase you have Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times in EPUB AND PDF format to read on any tablet, eReader, desktop, laptop or smartphone simultaneous - Get it NOW. Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times: Look inside the book: Caelius Aurelianus Siccensis, an African of the fourth or fifth century, translated the works of Soranus, both those on gynaecology and those on general diseases, and he preserves some of Soranus which we would not otherwise possess; but he writes in a barbarous Latin which, like the Latin of some other African writers on medical subjects, is calculated to cause great pain to any one not familiar with this particular style. ...Paul, like most of his time, was a compiler, but he was a skilful one, and while he entirely depends on Galen,Pg 7 Archigenes, Soranus, &c. for his information, he has gathered up the best of the medical knowledge of his time in a little encyclopaedia whose artistic completeness and orderly arrangement are not surpassed by any work of a corresponding nature at the present day. ...It will thus be seen that there is some information, in fact a great deal, to be had from the study of the works of the Arabs, but the barbarous style of the Latin and the roundabout way in which the works have been preserved, having passed through translations of three different languages, preclude any very exact deductions being drawn from them.

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The earliest classical writer on medical subjects is Hippocrates, who was born in 460 B. C. and who practised in Athens and other parts of Greece. The 'Hippocratic Collection' is well known to consist of works which are not all by Hippocrates himself; but as the pseudo-Hippocratic works all belong to the classical period they are all admissible as evidence for our purpose, and for the sake of brevity I shall throughout refer to them as if all were by Hippocrates. Many interesting instruments are named in the comparatively small collection of treatises which make up the admittedly genuine list of Hippocratic works, but, taking these along with the pseudo-Hippocratic works, the number of instruments named in the whole collection is surprisingly large, comprising as it does trephines, bone drills, probes, needles, tooth forceps, uvula forceps, bone elevators, uterine sounds, graduated dilators, cranioclasts, and others. After Hippocrates there is a break in the continuity of the literature, and for some hundreds of years Greek medicine is represented almost entirely by the Alexandrian Schools. The first printed edition of the Hippocratic works was a Latin translation printed at Rome in 1525, followed by the Aldine edition of the Greek text printed at Venice in the following year. Other editions are the edition of Föes (1595), Van der Linden (1665), Kühn (Leipzig, 1821). Later editions are the text with a French translation by Littré (10 vols., 1849-61), a scholarly edition by Ermerins with a Latin rendering (1859-64), and an excellent translation of the genuine works of Hippocrates by the world-famous Dr. Adams of Banchory (Sydenham Soc. Trans., 1849). The best edition, however, is the edition of Kuehlewein, begun in 1894 and at present in course of publication by Teubner, Leipzig. The later volumes have not yet appeared. For the portion of the text which is not contained in the first two volumes of Kuehlewein I have relied on the edition of Kühn for most of the readings, although occasionally those of Van der Linden or Föes are to be preferred. The references given are to the volumes and pages of Kühn's edition, but in this edition indications are given of the corresponding localities in the other editions so that cross-references to these can easily be made. There seems to be a different arrangement in different editions of Föes, for Liddell and Scott say the references in their Lexicon are to the pages in Föes but they do not correspond in any way to the pagination of the edition before me (Frankfort, 1595).