They were the founder of the Bard-Parker Company, which developed a cold sterilization method to prevent the dulling of blades that occurred during heat sterilization. Scalpel handles are known as “B.P handles”, after Morgan Parker and his business partner Charles Russel Bard. Scalpel blades were most often exchanged with fingers, or other surgical tools such as forceps. Morgan Parker patented the two-piece scalpel with a handle and removal blade in 1915, which provided stability whilst still being able to exchange blades between uses. The modern surgical scalpel with a disposable blade was inspired by King Gillette’s invention of the safety razor in 1904. Surgical instruments were manufactured by cutlery houses, and with poor hygiene conditions, the same knife would be used repeatedly. The Latin word “scallpellus” is where the English word “scalpel” comes from.įor a long time after, surgical knives with one straight edge and the other a sharp, cutting blade were used. Roman medicine followed in the footsteps of Hippocrates, and they were particularly proficient in making cutting instruments. This word is derived from “machaira”, a Lacedaemonian sword from the time. Hippocrates from Greece was the first to describe a surgical knife he called a “macairion”. These blades match skull markings from the same time, suggesting early brain surgeries. These flint knives were used to cut through the skull, though for what purpose historians aren’t completely sure.Īncient Egyptian blades shaped similarly to scalpels have been discovered, and obsidian blades have been found in a Bronze Age settlement in Turkey. There is evidence of knives being used in medicine as far back as the Middle Stone Age in 8000BC. Read on to discover how the surgical scalpel used today came to be. The surgical scalpel is a tool that has seemingly transcended time– from its beginnings in the Stone Age to the shiny hospital of the modern era.
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