Surgery

Wire loop by LAWSON-TAIT

around 1900

"C’est au XIIIe siècle que Guillaume De Salicetto invente le premier serre noeud. Cette technique sera reprise par Fallopius, en 1562 sous la forme d’un lasso qui, laissé en place 2 à 3 jours, devait emprisonner les polypes et tomber avec eux" (Frédéric FACON, thèse 2002).

The KRISTELLER, CINTRAT and PEAN wire loop, they all worked with the same principle After the surgeon strangled the tumor stalk by turning the screw, the entire device had to be forced several times around its own axis to twirl the silver thread. Then the thread was cut with metal scissors.

In the catalog of the company "Aeskulap" from 1910 we find on p. 646 a very similar device under the name "Serre-noeud de LAWSON-TAIT". With him, as with our model, the two thread ends are attached to two separate buttons, while the other models all have a single button.

The British physician Robert LAWSON-TAIT (1845-1899) was considered the most important gynecologist of his time. Established in Birmingham, when sterilizing his instruments and hands he only trusted the hot water - nothing like Formol! He performed numerous abdominal operations and was particularly interested in the problem of the abdominal cavity pregnancy. In 1873 he published a "Traité des maladies des ovaires" and in 1879 a book on women's suffering par excellence.

The instrument seems to us to be a further development of the strangler unit of LEVRET, which laid a silver thread around the polyp stalk as early as 1770 and contracted it for days until the tumor became necrotic and fell off (Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie, chez Vincent à Paris, juin 1770 pp. 531-576).