Antique medicine


Drill (?)

 

 

 

It is conceivable to use such a fine drill in woodwork, or decorating pottery. But also in dentistry, one could settle the instrument - far more daring instruments are offered in medical collections as dental cutlery ...



A real progress was the drill drill of the physician ARCHIGENES (2nd half 1st / beginning of the 2nd century), with which he trebled aching teeth. Like (almost) all the physicians of the time, Archenigen was a Greek - he came from Apamea, in today's Syria. His father Phillipos was a disciple of Agathinos. ARCHIGENES reports that he tapped a dark, aching tooth with a small trephine drill and thus alleviated a toothache for a patient (quoted by Walter von Hoffmann-Axthelm, Die Geschichte der Zahnheilkunde., Buch- und Zeitschriftenverlag, Die Quintessenz, 1973). , His technique went to school: in the second century AD GALEN, like ARCHIGENES in the first century, recommended that the diseased tooth be drilled with a small drill (De Compositione medicamentorum secundum locus, lib. 5, c.

 

Total length of the drill: 156 mm, diameter of the drill head: 3 mm