40 Fun Facts About Surgical Instruments

Which power tool began as a 1780s Scottish surgical saw for widening the pelvis in childbirth?

The chainsaw began as a fine serrated chain held between two wooden handles. A German doctor's bone-cutting version of 1830 was in effect a miniature chainsaw.

Which Founding Father designed a flexible catheter in 1752 for a brother with bladder stones?

Benjamin Franklin built the tube from hinged metal segments so that it would bend. He credited an earlier inventor, Francesco Roncelli-Pardino, with having the idea back in 1720.

Which wounded US president did Alexander Graham Bell scan for a bullet with an early metal detector?

James Garfield lay on a bed with metal coil springs, which confused Bell's induction balance. The search of July 1881 failed and the bullet stayed hidden.

Which execution device names the instrument that was standard for removing tonsils for eighty years?

The guillotine for tonsils was adapted in 1828 by physician Philip Syng Physick from a tool built to remove the uvula. It was later renamed the tonsillotome.

Which Stone Age tool material, flaked finer than any metal edge, is still used for surgical blades?

Obsidian is volcanic glass, and a well-made blade's cutting edge is only about three nanometers thick. US regulators have not approved it for use on people, though it is sold for operations on research animals.

Which insects' powerful jaws do some East African peoples use as emergency stitches for wounds?

Ants of the driver ant group grip so hard that Maasai warriors let soldiers bite both sides of a gash, then break off the bodies. The jaws stay clamped in place.

Which Roman city buried by Vesuvius has a house named after the surgical instruments found there?

Pompeii's House of the Surgeon was excavated in 1770 by Francesco La Vega and is one of the best-known homes in the ruined city.

Which insect names the most delicate surgical hemostats, made with smaller, finer tips?

Mosquito hemostats are a slimmer version of the standard locking clamp that surgeons use to pinch an artery shut and forestall blood loss.

Which profession did Manuel García follow when he built a two-mirror tool to watch living vocal cords?

A singing teacher, García built a tool from two mirrors in 1854 and used the Sun as his light source. Until 1895 every view of the larynx still relied on mirrors like his.

What does the Gamma Knife, a brain surgery tool invented in Stockholm, use in place of a blade?

Radiation beams from about 200 cobalt sources, arranged in a helmet-like dome, are concentrated on one tiny target inside the brain.

Which alloy, credited to Sheffield metallurgist Harry Brearley, are surgical instruments usually made from?

Stainless steel was first called rustless steel by Brearley, until Ernest Stuart suggested the more euphonic name. Its resistance to corrosion suits tools that are washed and steamed daily.

Which instrument did Morgan Parker redesign in 1915 with a reusable handle and replaceable blade?

The scalpel handle is still called a B.P. handle after Parker and his partner Charles Russell Bard. Their firm also devised a cold sterilizing method that did not dull the edge.

Which organ lends its shape and name to the shallow basin for soiled dressings in surgical wards?

Kidney dishes curve so they can be held snug against a patient's body to catch whatever falls. Americans usually call one an emesis basin.

Which item, counted in and counted out, is the object most often left inside surgical patients?

A sponge left behind even has its own medical name, gossypiboma. Some operating rooms now tag each one with a radio chip so it can be tracked.

Which steam chamber, invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, is used to sterilize surgical tools?

The autoclave had an ancestor two centuries older: Denis Papin's steam digester of 1679, the same device that led to the kitchen pressure cooker.

Which gas is usually pumped into the abdomen in laparoscopic surgery to make room to work?

Carbon dioxide is inexpensive and dissolves readily in blood. It is also colorless and cannot catch fire.

Which gemstone forms the edge of the surgical knives used in vision-correcting eye operations?

Diamond knives were invented in 1955 by Humberto Fernández-Morán. They are costly and must be professionally resharpened, but they also cut ultrathin slices for microscopes.

Which dog breed names the spring-action surgical clamps also known as serrefines?

Bulldog clamps hold on with a spring instead of a locking handle. The spring may be weak, or the jaws sheathed in soft material, so a blood vessel survives the grip.

Which American medical center names the heavy surgical scissors that cut tough tissue and stitches?

Mayo Clinic surgeons developed the heavy-bladed design for dense tissue such as fascia. The straight version trims so many stitches that it is nicknamed suture scissors.

Which operation was the Liston knife, named after a famously fast Scottish surgeon, made for?

Amputation knives had distinctive down-curving blades until the 1840s. By 1870 they had straightened to resemble the style that Robert Liston favored.

Which bones does the hand-cranked Finochietto spreader, refined by an Argentine surgeon, pry apart?

The ribs are levered apart in stages by a hand crank that locks at each stop. Enrique Finochietto added it in 1936, along with windowed blades, to a French design of 1914.

Which instrument for holding open body passages is named from the Latin word for mirror?

The duck-billed vaginal speculum began as a pewter spoon, bent into shape in the 1840s by J. Marion Sims during operations he performed on enslaved women.

What does the Bovie, a surgical tool first used by Harvey Cushing, use to cut and seal tissue?

Electric current above certain frequencies can cut tissue without making muscles contract, the insight physicist William Bovie built on. Before its 1926 debut, blood loss was the great obstacle in brain surgery.

Which surgical instruments, such as the Deaver and the Richardson, hold an incision's edges apart?

Retractors come in two basic types. Hand-held ones need an assistant to keep pulling, while self-retaining ones stay open by themselves once they are set.

Which Swiss surgeon, the first of his profession to win a Nobel Prize, invented a surgical clamp?

Theodor Kocher won the 1909 prize for his work on the thyroid gland, and the money helped him found a research institute in Bern. His clamp dates from 1882.

Which Houston heart surgeon names the surgical forceps made to hold blood vessels without damage?

Michael DeBakey developed them during his decades at Baylor College of Medicine. They are unusually long, and a coarse grip pattern sets them apart from other tissue forceps.

Which founding Johns Hopkins professor of gynecology names a curved, scissor-like hemostat?

Howard Kelly was one of the hospital's Big Four founding professors. His clamp grips with blunt ridges instead of sharp teeth or blades.

Which family of surgeons kept the obstetric forceps a secret in England for about 150 years?

The Chamberlens were Huguenots who had fled France, and their hidden tool for delivering a live child in difficult births won them royal and noble clients.

Which surgeon of Muslim Spain wrote the first illustrated guide to surgery and its instruments?

Al-Zahrawi, known in the West as Albucasis, introduced over 200 instruments in it. In the 14th century the French surgeon Guy de Chauliac quoted his encyclopedia over 200 times.

Which loop-tipped instrument scrapes the lining of the uterus in the procedure known as a D&C?

A curette for this job is a metal rod with a handle at one end and a loop at the other. The C in D&C stands for curettage, the act of scraping.

Which pointed instrument, named from the French for three sides, opens ports for keyhole surgery?

A trocar's classic three-sided point split the skin into three flaps that were easy to stitch closed. Many modern versions are single-use and have no blade at all.

Which bone-nibbling surgical instrument takes its name from the French word for rodent or gnawer?

A rongeur has a sharp-edged, scoop-shaped tip for gouging out bone, often to open a window in the skull. Brain, jaw, foot and orthopedic surgeons all use one.

Which surgical instrument, worked by hand, air or motor, shaves thin sheets of skin for grafts?

A dermatome of the first drum type, developed in the 1930s, was worked by hand. Later models driven by air pressure cut with more speed and precision.

What name is given to the toothed catch near the finger rings that locks a surgical clamp shut?

The ratchet's interlocking teeth let the user choose how hard the jaws squeeze. Fully locked, the tips of a hemostat press together with a force of about 40 newtons.

What holds a Foley catheter, a drainage tube named after an American urologist, inside the bladder?

A small balloon at the tip is filled with sterile water or saline once the tube is in, so it cannot slip out. Frederic Foley produced his original design in 1929.

Which medical specialty was practiced by Ramón Castroviejo, namesake of a delicate needle holder?

Ophthalmology made Castroviejo famous, because his refinements of the 1930s and 1940s turned corneal transplants into standard care worldwide. Dentists use his needle holder too.

Which country was home to surgeon Hümér Hültl, who built the first surgical stapler in 1908?

Hungary's pioneering stapler, built with businessman Victor Fischer, weighed 8 pounds and took two hours to assemble and load. Hültl is remembered as the father of surgical stapling.

What job does the Yankauer tip, designed by a New York throat specialist in 1907, perform?

Suctioning fluid such as blood clears the surgeon's view of the operating site. The tip's bulbous head and side holes let it work without harming the tissue around it.

Which blunt-tipped surgical scissors for delicate tissue are named after an American oral surgeon?

Metzenbaum scissors have long shanks relative to their blades and rounded tips, so a surgeon can probe and spread tissue apart without causing a sharp injury.

Which ancient Sanskrit medical text covers surgical instruments, their sharpening and tempering?

The Sushruta Samhita is a founding text of Ayurveda with historically unique chapters on surgical training. The Charaka text, by contrast, mentions surgery only briefly.