Am in the neurosurgical theatre again today, looking after someone who is having their sciatica fixed. The surgeon keeps asking the scrub nurse for a Watson Cheyne.
Surgeons and scrub nurses have to rote learn the names of hundreds of different surgical implements in order to perform surgery smoothly. Can you imagine if they had to say “Can you pass me that crescent shaped thingy, the one with the hook on one end and it’s kind of pointy and sharp….”
Some of them are usefully named after how they look
Some of them are named after their action. Note the animal theme.
The operation they are used for
Or the body part you operate on with them
But unfortunately the vast majority are eponymous, usually named after the surgeon who invented them.
This is one of my favourites, just because I like the name:
Hugo Obwegeser (pronounced “Obver-geezer” – at least by us) was an Austrian surgeon as is known as the father of modern orthognathic surgery.
I don’t want to end this post on a downer, but any discussion of surgical instrument names isn’t complete without mentioning the elephant in the room, the Sims speculum.
Dr Marion Sims was an American surgeon in the mid 1800’s and was long regarded as the father of modern gynaecology, inventing this duckbilled speculum to help in the repair of fistulas that women can get as the result of traumatic childbirth. Unfortunately he was also a racist misogynist psychopath, who practiced on poor black women with no anaesthetic for years, to hone his skills before turning to wealthy white women in order to get rich. There is actually a movement to get this instrument’s name changed to Lucy’s speculum, to celebrate one of his most famous victims. What an arse.