Existing comment:
Cautery handle with interchangeable irons, ca 1880.
Cautery.
Just as physicians developed methods for bloodletting, they also investigated numerous devices to stop the flood of blood resulting from injury or surgery. Bandages, tourniquets, and cautery are some examples. Tourniquets have been used since several hundred years B.C. to control bloodflow to or from a wound site and continue to be important circulation management tools. They work by compressing a blood vessel when applied around an extremity.
Cautery predates tourniquet use by several thousand years. The technique uses the application of a hot object, a caustic substance, or an electric current to destroy tissue and cause coagulation. Many cultures have adopted cautery for different purposes. Egyptian surgeons used heated knife blades to help control bleeding during surgery and ancient Greek physicians developed a number of different shapes for iron cautery devices. In the eleventh century, Islamic physician Albucasis developed many more iron shapes and wrote several treatises prescribing cautery for over fifty diseases, including migraine headache, hernia, harelip, epilepsy, and elephantiasis. Surgeons of the late Middle Ages used scalding irons to help control bloodflow from gunshot wounds and later surgeons relied on the technique to keep edges sterile and sever vessels without under bleeding. |