Evaluating Leather Pocket Surgery Cases
or Kits
By Dr. Michael Echols
Snowden & Brother catalog pre-Civil War pocket cases
Tiemann catalog post-Civil War pocket cases
Gemrig catalog post-Civil War pocket cases
Caution: Evaluating pocket surgical cases or
kits is very, very difficult because there is no absolute description of
the instruments that will be found in the leather container.
Without good photos, it is almost impossible to communicate and to
evaluate a kit. The
contents vary greatly from maker to maker and within any given maker.
It's almost as if the makers produced them to order, but we have
evidence of specifications from the catalog lists and drawings seen
below. That said, there is a very precise description of pocket
surgical sets by the Surgeon General's Office in the Revised 1862 list
of instruments as shown in
Part III, Volume II, Chapter XIV.--The
Medical Staff and Materia Chirugica"
Unlike a wood cased set, there is no
form into which the instruments fit in a leather case. The leather
cases did not hold up well given its use and deterioration over 145
year since they were made. It is rare to find an original leather
case with all it's original instruments, but they do exist. Most
however, are in poor condition and contain a complement of instruments
that do not necessarily relate well to the originals. For these
reasons, always view the contents of leather pocket surgical kits with
skepticism.
During the Civil War, remember that most of the
doctors who volunteered for service during the War were not 'surgeons', at
least not surgeons the way we think of them today. These small
personal surgery kits were all they need for the minor procedures they
normally did day-to-day. The vast majority of the doctors had
never done an amputation and at this point in medical history, there was hardly ever invasive
surgery done except in major medical centers like New York or Philadelphia.
Instrument maker
catalogs:
The
Snowden & Brother/Weiss
Catalog, which pre-dates the Civil War, contains instruments
that would or could have been used during the Civil War. To the best
of my knowledge, there are no catalogs depicting the exact instruments found
in leather pocket cases or kits during the Civil War. The instruments
specified in the 1862 Surgeon General's
Revised list
of instruments is as
close as we can come to detailing what is supposed to be in a military
pocket surgical kit or cased set.
Snowden & Brother's
1860 catalog was from before the War. After the War, the1870's
Gemrig Catalog or the 1880's
Tiemann Catalog show
examples of instruments which may have been developed or used during the War. The only specifications during the War are found in the 1862
Revised Surgeon
General's office specifications for the Union Army and those are listed below on this page
for pocket surgical kits.
Due
to the different variations in cases or kits from both Tiemann and Snowden,
it can be extremely difficulty to differentiate between the various names of
the kits.
Snowden and Brother 1860 Catalog:
Click on images to enlarge
Below: Tiemann & Co. (c. 1880's) Catalog, (not all these kits would have
existed during the Civil War)
Click on images to enlarge
Below: Instruments typically found in Civil War era
pocket surgical cases by Gemrig (c. 1872) Catalog. These instruments
are closer to the type and specifications used during the War.
Below: Instruments typically found in Civil War era
pocket surgical cases (c. 1880's)
The variation of
instruments found in a typical Civil War pocket surgical case is great.
It all depended on who specified the case and who was the maker. Here
is a list of instruments from the post-Civil War, c. 1880's, Tiemann & Co.
catalog to show the types of instruments one could expect to find in a given
leather pocket surgical case or kit. Be very careful about claiming
these instruments were in a Civil War issued kit as this catalog was not
published until 1889, but many of the instruments may have been carried over
from during the War.
Army specified contents of a pocket case
during the Civil War in the
1862 Revised list:
The Pocket Case
contained: 1 scalpel, 3 bistouries, 1 tenotome, 1 gum lancet, 2 thumb lancets, 1 razor (small), 1 artery
forceps, 1 dressing forceps, 1 artery needle, 6 surgeon's needles, 1
exploring needle, 1 tenaculum, 1 scissors, 1 director, 3
probes, 1 caustic holder, 1 silver catheter (compound), 6 yards suture
wire (iron), ¼ oz. ligature silk, 1/8 oz. wax, 1 Russia leather case.
Source: "The
Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. (1861-65.) Part
III, Volume II, Chapter XIV.--The Medical Staff and Materia Chirugica"
A list of what was found in various surgical sets during the Civil War:
Examples of pocket surgical kits:
Hernstein & Son Civil War Leather Pocket
Surgery Kit
Kolbe' Civil War Era Pocket Surgical Set
Tiemann pocket
surgical kit of Dr. John Coover
Schivley Civil War pocket surgical
kit
Drawings
from Bourgery & Jacob
Shown in the
diagram above, are various hand-knife positions for use of folding and fixed
scalpels.
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