Surgical Instruments as a Window into the Profession’s Past

At first glance, the highly technical procedures and specialization that characterize 21stcentury surgery bear little resemblance to the craft as practiced in Renaissance France and Italy or in the 19th-century operating theaters of Paris, London, or Philadelphia. Yet continuities in Western medical traditions link contemporary surgery to its professional predecessors. To understand the way surgery is practiced today, it is helpful to examine these historical roots. A peek into the cabinets that house and preserve historical surgical instruments reveals both continuities and differences. The evolution of surgical instruments tells the history of surgery in tangible ways, as the photographs in this piece demonstrate.