History of Medical Instruments

In the past few decades a number of studies dealing with eighteenth-century natural philosophy in England have pointed out its inextricable links with spectacle and public display. The commodification of cultural products, which was one of the main features of the Enlightenment, extended to science and scientific instruments, textbooks, and demonstrations, as well as to medicine. Pivotal works by Roy Porter have indelibly portrayed the vibrant marketplace in which medical practitioners operated. Even when they had a formal degree, “regular” healers had to compete both with “irregulars” and with a widespread culture of self-treatment (Porter, 1985, 1990, 1995; Porter & Porter, 1989; Schaffer, 1983; Stewart, 1992). In such competitive arena recently invented therapies attracted the attention of both patients and practitioners. From the 1740s onward, “medical electricity” was among the most attractive ones. The term indicated the applications of electric shocks and sparks to the treatment of various diseases, in particular palsies and “nerve disorders.” Electrical healing was first presented to the eighteenth-century public as a branch of experimental philosophy (Bertucci, 2001a). This essay analyzes the early diffusion of medical electricity, setting it in the context of the experimental culture from which it emerged. I deal with a relatively short span of time – the few decades during which almost instantaneously medical electricity came to be practiced in different European states – and I highlight the role played by itinerant demonstrators and instrument-makers in spreading what would soon become a fashionable, though controversial, healing practice.

"Science is simply common sense at its best; that is, rigidly accurate in observation and merciless to fallacy in logic."
~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Author Information: Professor, Department of Paediatrics, University of Florida Department of Pediatrics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, U.S.A. 32610.

https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whatson/ whats-on/upcoming-events/2017/dec/designing-english). Curated by Daniel Wakelin of the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, it is accompanied by a book of his authorship with over ninety colour illustrations, including most of the exhibits: Designing English: Early Literature on the Page (https://www.bodleianshop.co.uk/designing-english.html). The exhibition illustrates the design of manuscripts and inscriptions in English from the ninth century to the early sixteenth. It showcases the Bodleian Library's rich holdings of medieval manuscripts in English, ranging from illustrated Old English verse MS Junius 11) and early Old English glosses (MS Auct. D. 2. 19, the 'Macregol Gospels'), through fragments of Middle English lyric (MS Bodley 42; MS Rawlinson D. 913), to prestigious or authoritative works framed with illustrations and gold (MS Bodley 277, a Wycliffite Bible, or MS Rawlinson poet. 223, The Canterbury Tales), or new page designs for practical tasks, such as uroscopy or swan-upping (MS Ashmole 1413; MS Rawlinson D. 949). Also on display are other objects with writing, from monumental brasses to graffiti, including items on loan from the British Museum and Ashmolean Museum. For example, shown together are MS Hatton 20, Alfred's version of The Pastoral Care, and the so-called 'Alfred Jewel', perhaps the kind of aestel mentioned in his prologue.