Specification of James Lee Hannah : surgical instruments.

  • Hannah, James Lee.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of James Lee Hannah : surgical instruments. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Hannah's Improvements in Surgical Instruments. bladder are to be spring tempered, the manner of doing which is known to all surgical instrument makers. Now for a Specification of that division of the apparatus which does not enter the bladder. It is composed of the following parts seen in Plate A, 5 namely, Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Figure 5 is not essential to the operation, as will be shewn, it is merely convenient. Figure 3 is a frame of wood from twelve to twenty inches long more or less according to circumstances, which shall be mentioned. It is an inch and a half broad, (more or less), and about an inch thick. At one extremity of this 10 frame or body of the apparatus, and in the middle of that extremity on its broadest surface, a little groove, about an inch and a half long, is cut (as seen in Figure 3 of Plate A), just sufficient in breadth and depth to lodge an equal length of one of the shafts of either of the three instruments before mentioned. Across this little groove, near its outer extremity, is a little flat piece of 15 steel, about three quarters of an inch long, a quarter of an inch broad, and about a sixteenth of an inch thick. One end of it is screwed down to the wood with a screw that has not its worm or thread quite up to its head, but sufficiently far from it to allow the little flat piece of steel or button to be moved round across the groove to keep down the shaft in its place there, but 20 not to cover the steel spring. This little steel plate or button, after being moved over the shaft lodged in the groove, passes under a small flat steel arm that projects from a small screw, by which it is secured into the wood, as seen in Figure 3 of Plate A). This arm is about as long as the little button or plate is broad. The screw part of this arm (which is at a right angle to the 25 arm) goes about half an inch into the wood and allows the button to come under the arm in contact with it; the arm keeps down the button and secures the shaft of the instrument in the groove. At the extremity of the little groove which receives the shaft of the instrument, a small iron wedge, a little broader than the groove and about half an inch long, is driven down even 30 with the surface of the wood. It serves for better resistance to the extremity of the shaft. At about three eighths of an inch from this wedge, a semi¬ circular trough, about half an inch deep and an inch wide, extends through the length of the frame, as is seen in Figure 3 of Plate A. At the opposite extremity of this trough an arm or cross piece projects, (as seen in Figure 3 35 of Plate A), through which the trough is continued; this arm and the frame of the trough are made of the same kind of wood, sickamore. The trough is let into the arm or cross piece and they are secured together by little screws, as the Figure shews. Figure 4, of Plate A, shews a screw of the same kind of wood as the
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