While primary sources describing the procedures and presenting theoretical
arguments for and against bloodletting are plentiful, descriptions of the
instruments and their manufacture are often difficult to find. Before the
nineteenth century, one may find illustrations of bloodletting instruments
in the major textbooks on surgery, in encyclopedias such as that of
Diderot, and in compendia of surgical instruments written by surgeons. The
descriptions following the drawings are often meager and give little
indication of where, when, and how the instruments were produced. Until
well into the nineteenth century, the tools used by barber-surgeons,
surgeons, and dentists were made by blacksmiths, silversmiths, and
cutlers. These craftsmen generally left little record of their work. As
the demand for surgical instruments increased, specialized surgical
instrument makers began to appear, and the cutler began to advertise
himself as "Cutler and Surgical Instrument Maker" rather than simply
"Cutler and Scissor Grinder." A few advertising cards dating from the
eighteenth century may be found, but the illustrated trade catalog is a
product of the nineteenth century. Among the earliest compendia/catalogs
of surgical instruments written by an instrument maker, rather than by a
surgeon, was John Savigny's _A Collection of Engravings Representing the
Most Modern and Approved Instruments Used in the Practice of Surgery_
(London, 1799). This was followed a few decades later by the brochures and
catalog (1831) of the famous London instrument maker, John Weiss. By the
1840s John Weiss, Charriere of Paris, and a few other instrument makers
had begun to form surgical supply companies that attempted to market
instruments over a wide area. While there are a handful of company trade
catalogs dating from the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, the great influx of such
catalogs came after 1870. Trade catalogs, a major source of information on
the new instruments of the nineteenth century, provide the historian with
line drawings, short descriptions indicating the mechanism and the
material of which the instrument was composed, prices, and patent status.
For more details on nineteenth-century instruments one must turn to
brochures and articles in medical journals introducing the instruments to
the medical profession. These sources provide the most detailed
descriptions of how the instruments were constructed, how they were used,
and why they were invented. For many American instruments, the
descriptions available at the U.S. Patent Office offer illustrations of
the mechanism and a discussion of why the instrument was considered novel.
One finds specifications for many bizarre instruments that never appear in
trade catalogs and may never have been actually sold.
A final source of information is the instruments themselves. Some are
engraved with the name of the manufacturer, and a few are even engraved
with the date of manufacture. Some have been taken apart to study the
spring mechanisms and others examined in the Conservation Analytical
Laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution to determine their material
content. The documentation accompanying the instruments, while sometimes
in error, may serve to identify the individual artifact by name, place and
date of manufacture, and to augment our knowledge of the historical
setting in which these instruments were used.