Antique medicine


Potters spatula

Pottery tools? 

 


Many of the so-called "surgical devices" presented in the Antikensammlungen are utensils of Roman craftsmen who were probably patient rather than doctor ...



Each rod, whose end was thickened and formed into an olive (lat. Baca, bacula), could be used as a probe (lat. Specillum) with which the extent of an injury could be felt.

 


The 5 spatulas and styluses presented here probably served to smooth and decorate pottery or to describe or smooth a waxboard. But nothing prevented the surgeon from using them for his purposes ...