What else does this passage from Adam Smith’s wonderful book The Theory of Moral Sentiments bring to mind?

The remote effects of [instruments of surgery, of dissecting and amputation-knives, of saws for cutting the bones], which is the health of the patient, is agreeable; yet as the immediate effect of them is pain and suffering, the sight of them always displeases us. Instruments of war are agreeable, though their immediate effect may seem to be in the same manner pain and suffering. But then it is the pain and suffering of our enemies, with whom we have no sympathy. With regard to us, they are immediately connected with the agreeable ideas of courage, victory, and honour.

Those surgery instruments in David Cronenberg’s horror film Dead Ringers…

deadringers_shot9l.jpg

It is normal to ornament a wall with destructive guns, but not with helpful things like bone holding forceps. Why are we unable to associate surgical instruments with honor, victory, and courage? In essence, weapons can either be saving you or destroying you; the essence of a surgery instrument is always to save you.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

25 replies on “The Horror of Surgical Instruments”

  1. There’s a scene in the HBO series Rome where a soldier has been attacked in a tavern and hit in the head with a bottle. Glass embeds in his brain. The surgeon is brought into the home where the soldier lies on the table. He then proceded to drll into the soldiers head with a circular saw and removes a portion of the skull and the glass. No anesthetic, no sterile procedure and as he leaves he warns of flowing pustulants. The contrast between man as fighter and killer to man as savior I found fascinating. We live such insulated lives. Everything unpleasant is hidden from view. But it was always in view throughout mankind’s history.

  5. Guns are easy to use. Who in America doesn’t understand the basics of point and shoot? Surgical tools require advanced knowledge and training to use.

    Guns make us feel powerful. Surgical tools remind us of the power doctors have over us.

  7. Not to detract from the philosophical debate on pain causing instruments, but Charles, you quote a helluva lot more from non-fiction than fiction. Good/bad who’s to say, just an observation. So just a wee bit of advice (putting on my Dan Savage hat), start hanging around Paul Constant.

  8. I have no answer for your question, Charles, but offer this observation: some of the most horrifying moments in cinema (and real life) occur exactly when the trappings of the medical profession are used to maim, torture, kill, rather than save. I’m thinking of Marathon Man and Brazil (a movie I found more disturbing than funny). And in real life: Mengele, of course but also the clever automated syringes used to infuse the precisely time-sequenced triple injection of modern-day judicial homicide.

  10. I knew a transplant surgeon who collected both guns and antique surgical instruments (mostly Civil War-era stuff – saws for amputation, stuff like that). For what it’s worth he was (is) an excellent surgeon.

    Charles, you should check this out sometime:

    https://www.imss.org/

  11. I know lots of surgeons and obstetricians who collect old instruments. I actually have a forceps collection that I find quite beautiful.

  13. @2, you are right. but i just added the book on my kindle and forgot that i had made post when rereading the my favorite passages. but at least i did not cut and paste the words and use the same image.

  14. Because if you see those instruments and can recognize them – you need MORE anesthesia!!! No one should see these instruments except the people wielding them…

  16. Hanging guns on the wall allows one to think one has power over death; surgical instruments are a reminder that one does not.

  17. Guns, I think, are meant to project an image of strength and an implicit threat. Or perhaps the power possible to make such a threat. Surgical tools are a tacit confession of frailty. A quite human, natural frailty, no doubt, but this a weakness nonetheless.

  18. the natural extension of which would be that weakness or frailty is not courageous. not cowardly, necessarily, but not courageous.

  19. Anybody with an interest in the history of medicine and surgery (or just morbid curiosity), who lives near or travels to the Washington, D.C. area, would enjoy visiting the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

    Unfortunately they just closed temporarily in April to relocate from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus to the Army’s Forest Glen Annex in Silver Spring, MD (where it will be under the Fort Detrick chain of command).

    http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum/news/exh…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mu…

  20. @1

    I believe this is possible because of a lack of nerve endings in the brain.

    The type of early surgery that has always fascinated me is trephination. This was a process of removing a piece of the skull to “relieve pressure” on the brain as a cure for various diseases including mental ones. It’s an ancient surgery dating back to Neolithic times!

    The reason it fascinates me is that I sometimes wonder if — like leeches — it may find some sort of justification. Think about it — our skulls start off as soft and pliant, then as we grow into adults they harden. We assume that the brain mass plus blood will always be exactly the same volume as the point at which the skull fixes. But why should it be? One would think there might be residual growth (or shrinkage) over time. Maybe we have such high amounts of mental illness because of the lost art of trephination.

    http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/…

    II. WHY WAS IT DONE?

    The motives for Neolithic trephining have been the subject of speculation since the first specimens were discovered in the nineteenth century. Generally, it is surmised that, on the living, it was performed for the escape or entrance of spirits. This, of course, is conjectural. It may have been done for therapeutic reasons, such as for headaches, fractures, infections, insanity, or for convulsions. It might have been done for religious reasons. It has been suggested that the motive was to acquire rondelles (the disks of bone obtained from the cutting of circular holes in the skulls). In this event, they would have been used for charms, amulets, or talismans.

    Frequently, there is evidence of skull fracture, suggesting that the procedure was done to relieve intra cranial pressure.

    The following essential aspects of trephining must be accounted for in any explanation of the practice:

    a. The practice was astonishingly widespread.

    …

  21. I too have collected quite a few surgical tools and implantable devices (inventors give them to us to look at). They’re beautiful in their workmanship and complexity (or even simplicity). And they’re usually not scary IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY DO.

    But You Know, few people are familiar with surgical instruments. So, in a culture where people display and are familiar with guns (and maybe have a story about Grandpa’s gun over the fireplace), comparing guns with something few people have seen or even can obtain, is a little apples-and-oranges-y.

  23. @Mudede: Dead Ringers was a really great movie. We need more Cronenbergs.

    @Supreme: Remember the brain surgery in Planet of the Apes? Now that was some good shit.

  25. Who the dickens decorates with guns? Most of the people I know keep them in safes or gun cases, not hanging on the wall. I have lots of friends who hang swords on the wall, but most aren’t sharpened.

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