American Surgical Instruments: An Illustrated History of Their Manufacture and a Directory of Instrument Makers to 1900
The literature on surgical instruments has taken a giant leap forward with the publication of James Edmonson’s comprehensive study. This book is divided into a history, a directory, and appendices. In the historical portion, after laying out the scope of the work, Edmonson gives a brief account of the instrument trade in Colonial America. He then describes how instruments evolved in parallel with the three eras of surgical practice, as characterized by Brieger: the era of heroic surgery (1785–1840), the era of conservative surgery (1840–90), and the era of radical surgery (1890–1900). Using this framework, Edmonson documents the history of instrument makers in the major cities. These company and individual histories are fascinatingly written and exhaustive in their detail.
The directory of instrument makers is a useful document that could easily have been a stand-alone publication. It is of immense value to collectors, both institutional and private. There are five appendices: the first covers the actual manufacturing process; the next is a comprehensive 1809 inventory of the instruments of a prominent Boston physician. The third appendix reproduces the pages of an 1818 catalog believed to be the earliest issued by an instrument maker. Next are notes on the instrument trade in selected U.S. cities not covered in the main body of the work. The final appendix contains a listing of some of the institutional collections of surgical and dental instruments in the United States.
This work is subtitled An Illustrated History of Their Manufacture and a Directory of Instrument Makers to 1900. Ten images actually portray the manufacturing process, while the remainder of the 293 illustrations (which include 14 color plates) depict primarily the instruments themselves, or their cases or brass plates. The strong collection at the Dittrick Museum of Medical History contributed more than half of the illustrations, and another 41 come from one medical instrument dealer; surprisingly few are from such well-known collections as the National Museum of Health and Medicine (4), the New York Academy of Medicine (8), and the Smithsonian Institution (10).
The extensive notes are a great help to the researcher who wishes to pursue the subject further. They lift this book above a mere curator/collector’s volume to a scholarly work of great value and usefulness. My minor criticism has primarily to do with the index: city and state locations in the directory were not included. Since this portion of the book is interspersed with a considerable number of pages of photographs, I found myself leafing through page after page to find a particular city; I finally gave up and created my own index of states and cities. Also, the cross-referencing is awkward: page numbers could have easily been included, rather than mere references to yet another entry. [End Page 321]
This long-awaited study is the first major work on surgical instruments since Elisabeth Bennion’s Antique Medical Instruments (1979). Bennion’s work is primarily European and it is not limited to surgical instruments. Both books contain a directory of instrument makers, but Bennion’s research is primarily British prior to 1870, with merely a listing of names for continental Europe and North America. Edmonson extends his efforts to 1900 and has produced an exhaustive directory of American surgical and dental instrument makers with names, type of businesses, addresses, and dates; he considered leaving out dental instrument makers, but found that “there was no rigid separation of surgical and dental instrument making activity in the early stages of the industry” (p. 171). We are the beneficiaries of this decision. There are also major differences in the approach taken by these two authors, with Edmonson organizing his work as outlined above and Bennion titling chapters by the use of the instrument (ENT, Obstetrical, Ophthalmic, Dental, Veterinary, etc.). I feel that Bennion’s and Edmonson’s works complement each other splendidly.
All medical museums and libraries, as well as collectors and dealers, should possess this monumental work.
