19th Century Neurosurgical Instruments

Posted by Miss Cellania in Medicine on January 4, 2008 at 11:10 am


480_neurosurgical-set

This German neurosurgical set is dated to the early 19th century, when brain surgery meant boring holes with hand drills and slicing parts of the brain that doctors didn’t quite understand.

Around the central trepanning brace there are two fixed hand held trephines, two detachable handles and trephines attachments, a scalpel, Hey saw, elevator, brush, scissor handled spreaders, a starter trephine and two raspatories.

If it wasn’t labelled, I would have guessed this was a set of instruments of torture. Link -via Retrospectacle


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COMMENT

11 comments to "19th Century Neurosurgical Instruments"

  1. Tim
    January 4th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    Sounds like something a psychiatrist would use to destroy his patient.

  2. Jeff
    January 4th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    Good Lord, don't do that!

    Get us a unicorn chaser, stat!

  3. Howard
    January 4th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    This looks like the "What is it?" home game.

  4. Pudifoot
    January 4th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    I wonder how many neatorama readers checked out ebay to see how much one of these sets cost.

  5. kevin
    January 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Its funny to see how closely they resemble my set of drafting tools from the 80's, with the flat valvet case and layout

  6. heather
    January 4th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    I...think I'll just stay crazy thanks. O.o

  7. Sid Morrison
    January 4th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    There are a fair number of people (even Westerners) who still believe in trepanning to cure a variety of ills... It's actually rather mild compared to all the "routine" lobotomies which were performed into the late 20th century.

  8. ducstar
    January 5th, 2008 at 12:02 am

    ouch!

  9. tyler caviness
    January 5th, 2008 at 4:34 am

    Brain surgery hasn't come to far from these prehistoric implements. Now the trephinning is done by drill and is so modern. Drill at lest 3 hole in the skull; connect them with a cutting drill with a stop to prevent it from digging into the brain; and pop off the skull flap with a wedge and we have access to the brain. Mind those hands so we don't have any excess brain damage.

  10. Andretii
    January 5th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    ready to perform an exorcism after the operation

  11. allan
    January 6th, 2008 at 6:43 am

    where do they use these things? zombies?

    btw.. where is the screwdriver?


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