Surgery

Spring lancet (4)

around 1920

Bloodletting was anything but a banal, harmless intervention; there were, though rarely, injuries to tendons and nerves, there was phlebitis with subsequent thrombosis, yes embolism and sepsis.

After evaluating numerous medical histories, the French physician Pierre Charles Alexandre LOUIS (1787-1872), the founder of clinical statistics, was able to prove that bloodletting is useless and sometimes even harmful. Hardly anyone listened to him.

19th century lancets - owned by the Diekircher practitioner dr. Paul HETTO (1895 - 1979) - a lancet  with 8 knives still common in the 20th century: the lever for clamping and the rotary knob for cutting depth adjustment at the top, the trigger at the front.