MEDICAL ANTIQUES ARCHIVES
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A c. 1860 antique amputation set by George Tiemann, New York. The Civil War surgical instruments are in pristine condition.
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A superb c. 1850s axilla clinical thermometer with ivory scale marked: MCKESSON & ROBBINS 91 FULTON ST. NY. This maker is not listed in Edmonson, though the company is known to me by surviving catalogues. The glass tube is much more angular than the usual axilla thermometer. The instrument's original case is present, and it contains the notation: Given to Dr Mansfield / in Memory of / Dr. P.J. McMahon / Aug. 1st 1877. See Tiemann 1889, p. 4, fig. 1014.
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A fine antique spiral Petit tourniquet. The frame and screw are brass, and the strap is in fine condition.
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An antique c. 1880 pair of Anderson's obstetrical forceps made by Dick, Glasgow.
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A finely carved c. 1840 antique prosthetic hand. Nail holes at the wrist once fastened a leather strap for attaching the hand to the arm. A unique piece of orthopedic apparatus with a folk art quality.
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A c. 1860 antique counter-irritation seton needle with tortoise shell covers made by Evans, London. See Tiemann 1889, p. 87, fig. 1423.
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A copy of Lardner's The Microscope (London:1856) that is signed and dated: Dr. Josiah Curtis / Surg. U.S. Vols. / Oct. 1864. Knoxville Tennessee. Dr. Curtis (1816-1883) graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1843. During the Civil War, he served as a brigade surgeon, including duty as surgeon-in-charge at Cuyler Hospital, Philadelphia, and Medical Director at Knoxville. There are five citations to Curtis in the Medical & Surgical History; one accounts his participation in the hip amputation of a seaman wounded while serving on the U.S. frigate Congress during an engagement with the Confederate iron-clad Merrimac. Curtis settled in Nashville at the end of the War. In 1872 he took part as surgeon, microscopist, and naturalist, in the U.S. Geological Survey of what is now Yellowstone Park...this book may well have been carried by Curtis on this assignment. The next year he became chief medical officer of the U.S. Indian Service.
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An eighteenth century antique trocar with horn handle and iron cannula.
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A rare c. 1890s capital amputation saw with hard rubber handle scales. As aseptic surgery became the rule, the use of hard rubber represents the final vestige of 'ebony' handles for surgical instruments . By the mid-1890s surgical handles were all-metal. The antique saw is nine inches long and was made by George Tiemann, New York. It is thought to be a variant of Rust's saw.
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