Surgery

Thread from horse hair

about 1950

Horse hair is one of the earliest suture materials - tear-resistant, available in considerable length and in large quantities, it was already used by the ancient Chinese to suture wounds, so In a Chinese script from the 3rd century BC Chr. Is reported by a doctor named HUATO, who was able to remove diseased organs and thus heal people. An extraordinary note, since the then Chinese medical tradition normally prohibited surgery. Perhaps, according to the researchers, this huato legend refers to a medical tradition of mummies unearthed in Xinjiang province, as these people have undergone surgery, as evidenced by the discovery of a surgical incision sutured with horsehair.

The ancient Egyptians used ant pliers to adapt to skin wounds - a method they may have adopted from the Indians. The Greeks preferred fine tendons as sutures.

The Arabs introduced the suture with strings of musical instruments for deep seams - and horsehairs for skin sutures. Later, various materials were used: dried animal casings and tendons, skin cut into strips, maiden hair, birch bark strips, hemp and grasses. In the Middle Ages, one took horse or human hair and made a strand of it; This was inserted into an incision of the skin (calf, neck or groin) so that both ends of the strand protruded; these were knotted so that the strand did not slip out. The purpose of this case was to stimulate the antibodies (because the incision naturally inflamed) and thus more defenses against diseases (such as the plague) were available ...

During the American Civil War in 1865, different sutures were used:

- Surgeons of the Northern States used (unsterile) "silk" silk,

- southerners used cotton,

- Since catgut was excessively expensive, the Confederates often used horsehair at the end of the war. Since this was annoyingly rigid, you cooked your hair to soften it. The suture material was sterilized without anyone having been aware of this fact. The wounds healed cleaner and faster than before ...

Gustav SIMON (1824-1876), professor of surgery in Rostock and Heidelberg, introduced the seam with horsehair into the operating theaters of Europe ...

Still today, mane hair is used by horses in African folk medicine, such as "female genital mutilation" - as a suture in this despicable intervention sheep, horse hair, acacia thorns, raffia or iron rings and for hemostasis ashes, herbs, cold water, leaves and wound compresses Sugarcane used. The "horse-hair" bottle presented here contains 2 strands of 20 inches (x2.54 = 50 cm) each. It comes from a US plant of the pharmaceutical company JOHNSON & JOHNSON and was increased in January 2005 on Ebay. As a specialist in surgical sutures, the success story of the JOHNSON & JOHNSON subsidiary Ethicon began 40 years ago. Headquarters is Hamburg Norderstedt. There are currently 1,500 employees here.