Ratchet Arrangements on Surgical Instruments

[1860sEsquire]

A few of my period medical instruments contain a single ratchet. Sometimes, people looking at my instruments make a blanket statement that ratchets are indicia of post-war instruments but that is not correct.

Not all medical instruments with ratchet locks are post-Civil War. Multiple ratchets are, indeed, post-Civil War developments but single ratcheted instruments were manufactured and used by the original cast. See, e.g., Vol. I, No. 2 Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal (February, 1864), p. 22, which has an illustration of bullet forceps containing a "ratchet arrangement to prevent the blades from slipping." I do not know the extent to which such medical instruments were used in the field. However, I thought the acknowledgment of such instruments by a Confederate journal was noteworthy and I wanted to share it with colleagues.

The illustration also contains two other instruments useful in detecting the ball in a gun-shot wound. One we are familiar with, namely, the Nelaton probe. Another, a sliding detector, was something I was not familiar with. (Also, the illustration of the Nelaton probe is interesting - at least to me - because it is not the double-tipped wire device that most of us have seen. This one contains what looks like an ebony handle at one end and the porcelain tip looks larger than the tips I've seen in the field.)

The accompanying article on detecting and removing a ball is interesting, too.

Thomas Federico
Atlanta, Georgia

[NoahBriggs]

I always understood that multiple ratchets on an instrument was indicative of a post-war instrument. I agree that a single ratchet (i.e., like what we see on some of the clamps in an Archer set) was considered correct for the 1860s. I have not gotten around to verifying it in detail, but I have noticed that my hemostats look more like what you find in the Teimann catalogue dated 1889.

If I am not correct, please let me know.*











______________________________
* I could not possibly be a Ph.D. or work for CNN or Fox News because the phrases "I don't know" and "Yeah, I was wrong" are still, and always will be, in my vocabulary.

[Frederick14Va]

I have not really thought much about the ratchet device on instruments before. Ive examined hoards of documented original and pre-war medical kits in museums and various collections over the years. Single ratchet use wasnt that uncommon to find on those, in my observations, depending on the maker. I personally have three original kits, American and English manufactured, dated 1856, 1860 and 1863 respectively. Two of the kits have single ratchet instruments. I dont recall ever seeing double ratchet on any of the period and pre-war kits Ive personally examined.