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General Medical Instruments
Electrical medicine was often seen as an alternative to surgery - a way to affect the inside of the body without directly penetrating it. Thus, we do not have many conventional surgical instruments. (The cautery and the "radio knife" were used in surgery, but they have classifications of their own in our collection.)
Endoscopy has a more direct electrical connection. It means, briefly, seeing what is inside the body without having to cut it open. But it is dark in there, and this was a major problem until the invention of the lightbulb. Stick a periscope into a small opening, and you need all kinds of tricks with mirrors and lamps and sunlight to get enough light. Then small lightbulbs came into use, and made a tremendous difference. It's hard for us to imagine, without reading the books of the time, how happy this made the diagnosticians of the late 19th century.
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| The Bakken A Library and Museum of Electricity in Life 3537 Zenith Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55416-4623, USA Join our E-Mail List Contact Us Tele: 612-926-3878 Fax: 612-927-7265 |
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