A Victorian Surgeon’s Set

British, possibly by Young, steel with ebony handles, the three layers including instruments by various makers: a tenon amputation saw with calamander handle, bone forceps, two artery forceps, two artery clamps, two tracheostomy tubes, two trocars and cannulae, two tweezers, three (of four) Liston knives one by Young ; the second layer, with thirteen bistouries, scalpels and hooks by various makers, a hook (replacement), a combined director and scoop, and a needle, a probang, a hook, a paper case containing sutures, two Petit’s tourniquets and four silver Thompson’s catheters (one with stilet) by George Cowie, London 1880 and two by H.C. London 1876; the third layer including a whalebone probang, one graduated sound, two further sounds, four male catheters with stilets, a double-ended elevator, a lenticular, bone forceps, bullet extractors by Evans & Co., a bone gouge, two handles, two trephines, a bone brush, a Hey’s saw, tweezers, a combined scalpel and elevator, and a brass syringe; contained in fitted, velvet-lined (some wear), brass-bound mahogany case – 43cm. x 21.2cm. x 10.9cm.

Note: The vendor bought this from a dealer who claimed this set was owned by the Australian-born surgical pioneer and supporter of women in medicine, James Hogarth Pringle (1863-1941). Pringle’s father, George Hogarth Pringle, was also a surgeon and a close friend of Joseph Lister. James Hogarth Pringle graduated from medicine Edinburgh in 1885 and travelled and studied surgery in Germany and Austria. He trained in ophthalmology at Moorfields Eye Hospital and later became a house surgeon at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and Glasgow Royal Infirmary. A talented and innovative surgeon, he contributed to multiple surgical disciplines. He contributed to trauma management with his pioneering work on fractures and their treatment. Contrary to the mainstream practice at the time, he utilised aseptic methods, after Lister, and employed a policy of fixation of long fractures. He was also a pioneer of hindquarter amputation for those with tuberculosis of the hip which had spread to the pelvis. He developed expertise in head injury, published the first description of en-block excision for malignant melanoma and was the first surgeon in Britain to carry out a free vein graft in reconstructive arterial surgery. Perhaps he is best remembered for his namesake, ‘The Pringle manoeuvre’ – a technique of occluding the portal triad to control haemorrhage in liver trauma, which is still utilised today. Together with this, Jame Hogarth Pringle was a staunch supporter of the rights of nurses and female physicians. He encouraged Elsie Strong, one of Florence Nightengale's nurses and matron of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, to establish the first nurses’ training school in Britain. He championed legislation to allow women to become physicians and he became the first lecturer in surgery for Glasgow’s Queen Margaret Medical School for Women in 1899. During the First World War Pringle served a major in the 4^th Scottish General Hospital.