Tools of the Trade

<p>Nineteenth-century medicine is characterised by rapid technological change new</p><p>methods of diagnostics and treatments of disease long-reaching developments</p><p>in medical science and professionalisation. This has led to great interest in the</p><p>period and a large body of scholarly and popular research. However much of this</p><p>scholarship studies British German and French contexts. There is a pressing need</p><p>to study how knowledge and practice were transferred between regions and how</p><p>medical technologies were adapted locally.</p><p><br></p><p>Using Swedish and Danish medical journals Kristin Halverson looks more closely</p><p>at the relationships between knowledge practice and device between 1855 and</p><p>1897. Medical devices appear frequently in journals and are often related to practical</p><p>matters. With this in mind this study examines four technological concerns in</p><p>medicine more closely namely devices used to examine the nose throat and eye;</p><p>orthopaedic practice; Listerist antisepsis; and the introduction of asepsis. These</p><p>cases highlight how technologies were adapted locally and in practice. This is a</p><p>history of nuance that highlights the diverse landscape of nineteenth-century</p><p>medical practice.</p>