Vertebra of a 25 year old man who was stabbed in the middle of the right side of the neck with a broad and sharp knife, and was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital, arriving approximately an hour after the injury, pale and with a diminished…
Dissection Kit owned and used E. Tessa Hedley-Whyte. Kit is a tied roll of canvas with inside pocket-inserts holding a variety of picks, scissors, and tweezers
Detecto Physician Scale with 350 lb. capacity used in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's Longitudinal Study of Child Health and Development (1930-1987)
Prepared human skull on an adult man with sectioned skull top and disarticulated mandible. Skull has healed fracture line through left orbit ending in large opening with partially healed skull flap.
Long cast iron bar tapered at one end and blunted at the other end. The bar is etched with an inscription that has been painted white. It rests in a brass and wood mount.
Flexible monaural stethoscope, having a metal chest piece at one end and very short, straight earpiece at the other. The tube consist of two components - metal and textile sleeves.
Denison’s type of stethoscope. The ear pieces are made of dark brown wood (?) which lead into flexible woven tubes and a large chest piece. Originally this type of stethoscope comes with three interchangeable chest pieces for hearing different types…
Laennec type cylindrical stethoscope is made of two parts fitted together. Third part, screw-on wooden tube is missing. The stethoscope is assembled with the chest plug protruding from the funnel shaped chest end of the stethoscope.
Brass wedge spirometer on rectangular platform base. Spirometer attaches to base via metal pole. This spirometer was used by filling the rectangular basin with water and having the patient blow through the attached tube. The top piece moved up and…
Two piece glass ether inhaler. The body has a narrow globe with two external valves, one for atmospheric air and one for mouthpiece. Mouth piece is glass with a shaped iron fitting that sets into globe.
Modified Schimmelbusch (style 1889) ether/chloroform mask. Masks like these were covered with a gauze cloth, then placed over the patient’s mouth and nose, while drops of either chloroform or ether were applied to the cloth until the patient became…
Amputation saw found in rectangular wooden amputation kit. Top area of kit contains one large ivory-handled amputation saw with vertical slots in blade and textured handle, fastened to inside lid of box by two metal swinging tabs.
The objects inside this kit indicate that the original owner was probably an obstetrician who may have been a practitioner of Dämmerschlaf or “Twilight Sleep.” A combination of morphine, to mitigate pain, and scopolamine to cause amnesia, was given…
The original “iron lung” respirator was designed by Phillip Drinker with Louis Agassiz Shaw at the Harvard School of Public Health. Its first clinical use occurred on October 12, 1928 at the Boston Children’s Hospital. The subject was an…
Modified Esmarch (style 1877) ether/ chloroform mask, Masque de Demarquey, by French manufacturer Mathieu. The folding frame was intended to make the mask adjustable over diverse facial anatomy. Masks like these were covered with a gauze cloth, then…