The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1897-06-19
TOOLS FOR SURGEONS,
Where the Carvers In Human Flesh Find
Their Implements.

one curious businesses and trades, facto-
ries, individual callings and shops that
seem to bear no especial relation to the
commerce of every day. 1t does not
seem as if these odd business interests
had much to do with the prosperity of
the world, or were concerned in it at
all. 1t is typically American that per
haps the most interesting of the strange
establishments in New York deals with
science and inventive ingenuity.
The building where this curious bust
ness-it is the manufacturing of every
sort of surgical instrument and device
= is lodged is itself one of the strangest
III New York. But a few blocks from
the city hall, it looks as though the sur
rounding piles of brick and mortar had
squeezed it into half its proper COM
pass. The first floor is a salesroom. The
hall floors above are devoted to stock.
plan and work rooms. In a little two
story building in the yard at the back
is the experimental and repair work
shop" where eight to ten nimtle fin
gered mechanics are on hand.
lICIC i , liClC OAt lOUIH IlEIt TGIQdTk-
able ideas are born or assume form, each
of them concerning in some way the
physical welfare of men. Every inch of
its wall is covered with framed photo
graphs OF the most famous physicians,
past and present, of Europe and Amer
lea, each bearing an autograph sigma
ture, all i'll frames precisely the same.
A huge, old fashioned desk stands By
the window, piled high with foreign
scientific reviews in all languages, cata-
logues and models i'll cleaning metal,
hard rubber and glass. Here the present
controllers of the establishment sit all
day, porting i've drawings or half de-
signed Instruments and studying the
suggestions and ideas that scientific aud
medical men from all ends of the coun-
try pour into their ears.
The elder of these men has been at
this work for A years. and the establish
ment was not young then. Thousands
upon thousands of surgical devices have
come forth from it. Four hundred or
500, perhaps 1000, inventions Of real
practical value and utility are turned
out of this room each year. Doctors
write, describing what q certain medical
appliance, could it be made thus, might
perhaps, probably would, accomplish,
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 any profit, however successful
their idea may work out. The establish
ment considers it an honor to be applied
to, the more times the better, and it
knows the reputc Of its product is spread
ing far and wide. Thousands Of dollars
yearly go out on this continual expert
menting. Some of them never return.
Even in the event of great success and
the discovery OF a completely new sur
gical principle a patent is seldom taken
out. The doctor inventor cannot because
of medical ethics. The establishment
finds it hardly worth its while because
OF the expense and the small number
made of any one instrument.
1t is as good as a fairy story of the old
w ~ rPS1id Gil dCuI VI iiiOIt III lIlls
and see and hear of the curious |
things being planned and experimental
with. Many seem to the laymen fan |
tastlc i'll their uses and the results ac- |
complished with them not to be be-
lleved. One instrument of this sort is |
the bullet probe telephone, with which |
she modern surgeon, an ordinary tele- |
phone receiver strapped to his ear, can
hear when his probe touches the bullet
far within the tissues, a distinct click.
Many of the implements made here |
have almost revolutionized certain |
of surgery. In a box on the |
heaped up desk spoken of lay, the last
time the writer visited this room, a del
icately adjusted, minute instrument,
with a scale marked along its length. |
Its purpose was to make probing in the
brain safe beyond a doubt. A probe Of
any required size fitted into the handle. |
and as the surgeon gently inserted the
tip and went farther and farther within
skull the scale would register the
exact energy of the pressure. Beyond a
certain point there was danger in pere-
IT the scale registered over d
certain fraction of an ounce, it proved
that the probe had left the track of the
bullet and had touched cellular matter.
The most curious thing / ever
made?" replied the old instrument
maker, repeating the question. THAT
is a hard u to answer. There have
been so many strange things. But-yes
I think the most curious was an an
pllance l designed on the ideas of a doc
somewhere in tie southwest for
sucking snake bites. 1t was a little
instrument any n could carry around
with him, and when set on the wound
would, the doctor thought don't