Antique medicine


Spoon probe

 

 

"The spoon probe is a multipurpose instrument that has not only found application in the field of medicine. The actual spoon is slim and narrow, the shape either semicircular or V-shaped. The other side may be, for example, a needle that can be used to sense foreign objects, but also olive-like thickening that could be used, for example, to burn out wounds. Between the two ends is a more or less long narrow handle whose transitions could have been decorated.

 


In the simplest case, the spoon probe could be used to dose, mix and administer remedies. She also found her use in cosmetics, where cosmetics were mixed and applied. In medicine, the spoon probe was also used a lot for cleaning and cleaning wounds and for scratching out fistulas. Even today, the spoon probe is in use by the doctors, but is then addressed as a sharp spoon or curette "(cited https://www.antike-heilkunde.de/).

 


Occasionally the instrument case and the medicine box were combined into a polyvalent box of lead or bronze (lat .: pecillotheca). In his travel case, the Roman doctor took a variety of equally polyvalent instruments with him, but also remedies - he was often a pharmacist at the same time.

 


The containers of drugs were often made of lead, because their toxicity had not been recognized. Others were made of wood. Many medications were conditioned in the form of collyrene, rods from which one could slice (the precursors of our tablets). Other drugs were presented in granule or pill form.
Roman pharmacology includes so-called ointment boxes, a combination of medicament box and friction plate (porphyry, slate, marble), sometimes with sleeve for pharmaceutical equipment.
The ointments touched on the plate were applied to the wound with ornately decorated spatulas, the extent of which he had previously explored with the button-shaped end of the wound ...

 


Presented spoon probe (lat .: cyathiscomela)
Length above. 114 mm
Length of the sheet 43 mm
Max. Width 14 mm.