It’s very late for brain work but I will hazard a guess at it being a medical trepanning tool (for making holes in a skull).

What an accidental pun that was!

Edited By V8Eng on 05/08/2018 00:23:12

Youch. The old term "sawbones" was brutally frank in its summing up of medical surgeons.

Surgical history is fascinating. And what is done today will be considered cruel and crude within 100yrs too.

The link below to some of the history of bladder stone surgery is a worth clue to what went on. You can imagine how much pain someone is in to undergo such a procedure without any anaesthetics – particularly when roaming stone cutters would turn up and offer their services to a town… often carrying out such procedures publicaly in the town square, cutting all the patients in one day and then leaving fast before they all started to die.

**LINK**

Edit additional: I once saw practice as a student with a guy who did some of the earliest internal fixation work on cats and dogs circa ww2. He used to fashion his pins from motorcycles from the local scapyard on the grounds that the spokes were less prone to corrosion than other easily got bits….

pgk

Edited By pgk pgk on 05/08/2018 07:58:54

During the American Civil War a Doctor (saw bones for sure) stated He had arm amputations down to 15 seconds. No anesthetic back then just a slug of Whiskey. OUCH.

If I remember rightly from my history lessons Surgeons were very proud of how rapidly they could amputate limbs. Another sign of ability was how well bloodied their apron was.

All that without anaesthetics or anti biotics.

I was a coward with my leg coming off; General anaesthetic!

However the physio did come to see me the next day to tell me if I behaved myself I could be out of the bed and walking on crutches by the end of the week. I was eating a chocolate bar I'd bought from the vending machine in the main corridor at the time… I couldn't work out if she was pleased or grumpy when I told her.

This was a little over ten years ago, and I was off work for four weeks. These days the only residual pain is phantom limb syndrome, which I would happily swap for a kick in the gentlemans area any day of the week. Kidney stones you can keep mind.

Reminds me of the tale that wifey tells about being given a Zimmer frame on wheels when she was in hospital recovering from a bad break of the leg after a horse riding accident. She started off going up & down the ward so fast that they promptly took it away from her. Spoil sports!

Edited By Bodger Brian on 06/08/2018 20:51:10