[The tourniquet of Jean-Louis Petit]. / Apropos du tourniquet de Jean-Louis Petit.

In the early part of the 18th century the mechanization of Petit's tourniquet is one of the most outstanding medical inventions. During more than a century that tool without any noticeable change was in the surgical boxes in all countries. As the mechanic Peron has been intensely working to handcraft the device with the utmost urgency Petit's tourniquet could have become that of Petit and Peron.

[History of phrenology]. / Quelques propos autour de la phrénologie.

Gall & his supporters had intuition that brain was made up with functional areas but they did not correctly place them. This false science brought nothing to medicine but it left its mark on 19th century literature. However it contributed to introducing the notion of mitigating circumstances in the legal proceeding and set up basis of professional recruitment. It left plenty of technical gears: crane casting, china busts, phrenological penholders, knobs, craniological snuffboxes and a lot of geographic maps of the skull bumps.

[Development of the stethoscope from Laennec to Cammann]. / Evolution du stéthoscope de Laennec à Cammann.

A history of Stethoscope from Laennec to Camman through Piorry, Nauche, Louis, Landouzy (father), Commins, Williams, Stokes, Billing and Depaul.

[About Philippe Ricord]. / A propos de Philippe Ricord.

As chief of a department of the Hospital of the Venereal Patients from 1832 to 1861, Ricord was a practitioner in vogue well-known in the political and artistic people of Paris as he had be taken medical advice by Gaetano Donizetti in 1845 and Jules de Goncourt in 1869. His fame was brilliant in proportion of his financial success. His personal tools--ivory speculum and gilded tools--are in his own image. The author shows a surgery tool-box carved with Ricord's name and probably manufactured by Charrière about 1865.

[Birth of medical electricity]. / Naissance de l'electricité médicale.

In the mid-eighteenth century Jallabert treated an hemiplegia using electrostatic electricity and published the patient's recovery. Immediately, physicians and clergymen started to use the Nollet's machine to treat many neurological diseases and published their results. The Galvani's constant was also a medical seism when he though the had discovered animal electricity. Galvanism entered immediately medical practice for a long time.

[Tin bubble pots]. / A propos des pots à bouillon d'étain.

In the sixteenth century Ambroise Pard uses of an hermetic pewter pot to obtain a beef-tea as a medical therapy. He describes the protocol to prepare it and the way to ordain the beef-tea to patients. The same hermetic spheric pewter pot is always in use in the middle of nineteenth century. At that period the discovery of creatin confirms the usefulness of that medical pewter pot who seems to be an only French production.

[The matrix speculum of Récamier]. / A propos du spéculum d'etain de Récamier.

The matrix speculum probably appeared in the first century as a bronze instrument: it was dug out of the ruins of Pompeï and was still used at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1804-1806. Récamier used a slender tin tube to treat the ulcers of uterus and his tube quickly became conical and then appeared a double tin "leaflet" speculum. Four main reasons explain the great success : the smooth wall of the tube, the choice of tin to have a good lighting during the clinical examination, the conical design for anatomical reasons and the veneral diseases in Récamier's period.

[The pewter bleeding bowls]. / A propos des palettes à saigner en étain.

In the late seventeenth century, then along the eighteen and nineteenth centuries the amount of the bloodlettings was measured by means of three pewter bleeding bowls that held three ounces of blood, about 300 millilitres. In the middle of the nineteenth century new and large bleeding bowls with metric graduations were manufactured only by the Parisian potters.

[Concerning hearing aids]. / A propos des cornets acoustiques.

Ear trumpet copy musical instruments as: horn, trump, trombone, banjo and specially bell. All of them utter sound but their shape is used by ear trumpet to collect sound. Sea shells were used as trump by fishermen for many centuries, the same shells became an hearing device during the nineteenth century by inversion of his function. For creators a same shape has necessarily two opposite functions: if an instrument is able to utter sound, the same design is also able to collect sound. Megaphone and ear trumpet are entirely similar but their function is just the opposite.