The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-02-14
TOOLS FOR THE DOCTORS.
Making Instruments to Carry Out
Special Ideas.
From the New York Tribune.

From the New York Tribune
Every great city has hundred and enc
curious businesses and trades. factories,
individual callings and shops that seem to
bear no especial relation to the commerce
of every day. 1t does not seem as IL
these odd business interests had much TO
do with the prosperity of the world, or
We're concerned in it at all. 1t is typi-
cally American that perhaps the most in
teresting of the strange establishments in
New York deals with science and inven-
tive ingenuity.
lit is the manufacture of every sort OF
surgical instrument and device-is lodged
is itself one of the strangest in New York.
But a few blocks from the city hall, Ii
looks as though the surrounding piles of
brick and mortar had squeezed it into half
it's proper compass. The first door Is a
salesroom. The hall floors above are de-
voted to stock. plan and work rooms. In
a little two-story building In the yard az
the back is the experimental and repair
Workshop where eight 10 ten nimble-
fingered mechanics are on hand.
There is here one room where remarka-
bic ideas are born or assume form, each
one of which concerning in some way the
physical welfare of men. Every inch OF
it's wall is covered with framed photo
graphs of the most famous physicians,
past and present, of Europe and America,
each bearing an autograph signature, all
in frames precisely the same. A huge.
old-fashioned double desk stands by the
window, piled high with foreign scientific
reviews la all languages, catalogues and
models IN cleaning metal hard rubber
and glass. Here the present controllers
of the establishment sit all day, porting
over drawings of half-designed instru-
ments and studying the suggestions and
ideas that scientific and medical men from
all ends of the country pour into their
ears
The elder Of these men has been at this
work for forty-seven years, and the es-
Enlistment was not young then. Thou
sands upon thousands of surgical devices
l4nuH q.
hundred. perhaps "a thousand. inventions
of real practical value and utility are
turned out of this room each year Doc
tors write, describing what a certain me-
chanical appliance could it be made thus,
might perhaps. probably would. accom-
plish, and forthwith plans are made and
after much study and care the instrument
Is designed and dispatched.
No charge Is made the doctors. nor on
the other hand, do the medical men derive
amy profit however successful their idea
may work out. The establishment
considers it an honor 10 be
applied TO-, the more times the
better and II knows the repute OF its
product IS spreading far and wide. Thou
sands of dollars yearly go out on this
continual experimenting. Some OF them
never return. Even in the event OF great
success, and the discovery OF a complete-
y new surgical principle. a patent Is sell
dom taken out; The doctor-inventor can
not. because of medical ethics; the estab-
lishment finds Il hardly worth its while,
because of the expense and the small
hLlhncf hudut OF any one Instrument.
IL IS as good as fairy story of ts- "A
sort TO spend an hour or more I'm this room
and see and hear OF the curious things
being planned and experimental with
Many seem TO the layman fantastic in
their uses, and the results accomplished
with them not to be believed. One in
Strumcnt Of this sort Is the bullet probe
telephone, with which the modern sur
gcon. or an ordinary telephone receiver
strapped to his car can hear, when his
probe touches the bullet far within tho
tissues, a distinct click. Another novel
implement Of surgery IS minute snw
60 be operated inside the nose. its stroke
less IMAM quarter of an inuh run by
electricity. BEFORE this was devised such
internal saving had to be done by hand
and dctt as the surgeon might be- he was
necessarily slow IN comparison with this.