Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman TimesMilne, John Stewart
History
Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times
Milne, John Stewart
Surgery -- History; Surgical instruments and apparatus
In Soranus (Bib. II. xviii. par. 59, p. 359, ed. Rose) there occurs
mention of an instrument for puncturing the membranes where they do not
rupture spontaneously:
Χόριον δὲ μὴ ἀναστομούμενον κατιάδι προσεχόντως διαιρεῖν τῷ δακτύλῳ
προκοιλάναντα τι μέρος.
The Latin version of Moschion has:
Folliculum verum non ruptum ante digito impresso formantes locum
phlebotomo sollicite dividimus omnibus praedictis post encymatismis
utimur (xviii. 10, p. 83, ed. Rose).
However, we cannot accept this as conclusive evidence that the katias was
the same as the phlebotome, as I have already pointed out that this
version of Moschion is a late retranslation into Latin of a Greek
translation of the original Moschion. While the meagre references to the
katias point to its having been a similar instrument to the phlebotome, it
is by no means certain that the instruments were identical. The next
writer who notices the instrument is Aretaeus, who mentions it in the cure
of headaches (_Cur. Morb. Diut._ i. 2):
'We abstract blood from the nostrils, and for this purpose push into
them a long instrument named κατειάδιον, or the one called the scoop'
(τορύνη).
In a note to his edition of Celsus, Lee says Aretaeus 'invented an
instrument having at the end a blade of grass, or made like a blade of
grass, which was thrust into the nostrils to excite an haemorrhage in some
affections of the head. This instrument is named κατειάδιον, from κατά and
εἴα a blade of grass'.
I have shown, however, that Soranus, who wrote a century before Aretaeus,
used the term, and a comparison of the various forms in which the word
appears seems to me to point rather to a connexion with καθίημι, one
meaning of which is 'to let blood'. The next writer who mentions it is
Aetius (II. iii. 2, and again II. iv. 14), where he refers to its use in
opening quinsy, in a chapter copied from Leonidas:
'If the patient be adult make him sit down, and, opening his mouth,
depress the tongue with a spatula or a tongue depressor, and open the
abscess with a scalpel or katias' (σμιλαρίῳ ἢ κατιάδι).
Paul says that abscess of the womb is to be exposed with a speculum and
opened with a scalpel or katias (σπαθίῳ ἢ κατιάδι). Paul also refers to it
in perforating the foetal cranium in delivery obstructed through
hydrocephaly (πολυπικῷ σπαθίῳ ἢ καθιάδι ἢ σκολοπομαχαιρίῳ) (VI. lxxiv).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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