Roman Medical Tools

Many different tools were used by ancient Roman doctors and some of these tools are still being used today. For example, scalpels were a common tool used among Roman doctors and were made from iron, bronze or steel. A similar looking tool is still used today, this suggests that modern doctors continue to utilise ancient Roman tools. The Romans used many tools when regarding bones, including bone drills, bone saws, bone levers and bone hooks. The bone drill looks very similar to a modern-day corkscrew and was used to remove diseased bone tissue from different bones in the human body. They were also used to drill holes in the bone to allow access to different parts of the body, for example, the brain. A bone saw was used to amputate body parts as the Romans knew it would decrease the cases of gangrene, which is dead tissue in the body.  Bone levers were used to either remove teeth or put bone fractures back in place. Lastly, bone hooks were used to manoeuvre small parts of body tissue and were also used as probes. The Roman medical tools were very important and used regularly, however, the most important tool by far was the scalpel. Another common treatment was the cautery technique. This is said when Hippocrates writes: “What is not healed with medicine, is healed with the knife; what the knife does not heal, is healed with the cautery, and what the cautery does not heal must be considered incurable.”