The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-18
GOSSIP FROM ITALY.
A Variety of Topics for the General Reader,
and Something for Surgeons.

the 9th of September l read an interesting
article on the "Origin of the Thimble,'
which, according to the old heading in the
newspaper of forty years ago about doubtful
intelligence, may be put down as important if
true" The article in the journal was quoted
from a publication called the "Dorcas Magazine
I do not know the scope of that magazine, but it
would be well for the writers of such articles to
look into their facts before they lay down as
history the account given in your extract on the
"Origin of the Thimble." According to the
writer. ''the thimble is a Dutch (Hollandl inven-
ton, that was first brought to London in 1895 by
one John Lofting, who began its manufacture al
.Islington, gaining thereby both honor and profit
1t may well be that one John Lofting was the
first manufacturer in modern times Of some sort
of thimble, on the Dutch patent, in London, but if
the man who wrote that article was
q Londoner, he would only have to go to the
British Museum to see a number of ancient Ro-
man thimbles; or, if the said writer would con
tinue his walks a little further, he would come
to the Guildhal Museum, where he would see
some twenty thimbles, from the Roman period
down to medieval times. If he will come over
here l will take him to that greatest treasure
house of antiquity, the National Museum" as
it is now called. and win show him amidst all
the pharaphernalia of female toilet and working
Observation-Disclosures combs lin ivory and
bronzel, hair-pirs of all sorts of materials,
pots for cosmetics, ivory boxes for pearl
powder, for doing away with two much redness,
shells with carmine in, for doing away with too
much paleness women don't employ such
things nowadays ], mirrors in plated bronze,
needles, needle cases, thread-winders, and, last
but not least, the bronze thimble. Now all
these things were covered in Herculaneum and
Pompeii by the ashes of Mt. Vesuvius exactly
1,616 years before the writer in the 'Dorcas
Magazine" says the thimble was invented ''by
one John Lofting." No, you may rest assured,
the thimble is as old as fallen man. don't say
that Adam and Eve used a thimble in their first
essay at clothes-making, for the material was so
easy to shove a thorn needle through that it was
not necessary; but, you may depend
upon it, when our first parents
went to making their garments out of
the skins of beasts, they had something to push
the needle and to protect their fingers. They
had a thimble of some kind. The Roman thin
Die was very much like most of the thimbles
used fifty years ago in the United States-thatis is.
open at the top as well as at the bottom. The
fayorite thimble to-day among the peasants of
those Latin countries, France, Italy, Spain and
Portugal, is the old fashioned Roman Il. e., the
OPEN thimble.
The museum in Naples has been the death of
a good many first Inventions" For instance,
the trombone was said to be a modern invention.
TNl,o- - r-ae J1-r ,ya OF pauovnsi - .1,o.roJ +bo4
the ancients knew as much about it as we do. 1t
is now believed TO be the 'sacbutn of the Scrip
ture mentioned in Daniel ill.,, 5, 10, 15,) whereby,
through proclamation of Nebuchadnezzar, all PEG
pie were ordered to come up and worship his
golden image, lat what time we hear the sound
of the eornet, flute, harp, sacbut, psaltery and
dulcimer and all kinds of music
As to fishing tackle there is an immense varie-
ty from Pompeii in the Naples museum. There
are netting mot %knittingl needles-bronze and
bone needles for this purpose-and no less than
40 common fish hooks, from the size of those I
used to catch minnows with in Pogue's run, to
large shark hooks. There is one large quadruple
fshhook, weighted, and I suppose that it was
for suspending oyer a hole where some large
specimen of the briny was known to frequent.
These hooks are in every respect the exact
type of our modern fsh-hooks, only
quisitely made, and would have delighted old
Nat Cox, or the living Amos Hannaway, Berry
.Sulgrove, Judge Hines, and Myron W. Reed.
In some respects the most remarkable discov-
cry made at Pompeii was a house in which were
several hundred surgical lnStrumentS-moStly
in bronze-showing that the ancients were ex-
ceedingly far advanced in surgery. But here is
the most curious thing in this discovery, viz:
that several catheters flor both men and women)
aud three 'sspecula' were found. These instru-
ments are supposed to be Of modern invention.
DR.. j. L. Petit, a distinguished French surgeon
and inventor of surgical instruments, was born
in France in 1914, and died in 1850, j. O., he died
six years after the ruins of Pompeii were dis
covered. Now, DR.. Petit invented before the
middle of the last century a catheter (8nea ifs
tula), which at the time and since has been
looked upon as a new departure in that line.
But here in Pompeii, in the so-called blouse of
the Surgeon" was found an instrument which
DIR. Barringer, an English surgeon of Naples,
thus describes; "a male catheter, ten inches in
length. The shape Is remarkable from its hav-
ing the double curve like the letter S, which is
the form that was reinvented in the last cen
fury by the celebrated French surgeon, J. l..
Petit. 1t is open at one end, closed Il at the other.
At the closed end is an eye, as in the modern
instrument" DR.. Johnston, of Cambridge, Ind,
10 whom Mr.. John Hall, the superintendent Of
the schools of Cambridge, introduced me in
1879, showed me a very interesting book of
travels written by an English DR.. Johnston
about the first quarter of this century. The
English DR.. Johnston had just visited Naples,
and saw in the museum this catheter and the
speculum uteri, and the speculum ami, and he
gives his opinion that DR.. Petit had seen these
instruments after their discovery at Pompeii.
This wa. impossible, because these instruments
which I have mentioned were not discovered I'M
til 1771, or seventeen years after DR.. Petit had
been in his grave. His invention, therefore, was
really an independent one, but, curiously enough,
it was almost exactly like one known to the an
clients many centuries before Dr.. Petit was
born.
There are now in the museum at Naples three
specula, one of which is bi-valvular lit is the
speculum anil the second is tri-valvular, and the
third one, found last year, is quadri-~v alvular.
DIR. Barringer says of the tri-valvular: 'Pro-
fessional men have discussed this instrument
very closely. 1t is a tri-valvular speculum. The