Evaluation and Reconstruction of Alzahrawi's Puncturing Instruments

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf Ibn-e-Abbas Zahrawi(936-1013 A.D.), known as Albucasis in west, was one of the greatest physicians in the Islamic world. To many historians, he was considered as the father of modern surgery. His book, Al-Tasrif, e.g., written in 30 chapters, was, in fact, a medical encyclopedia of that era. It was used as one of the main references in medical academic centers for centuries. The 30th chapter of this weighty book was dedicated to surgery. In this chapter, Zahrawidescribed many surgical procedures and introduced about 200 instruments invented for those procedures. In addition to drawing some of the instruments, he explained their size, shape, and application, as well. In the second section of this chapter, named “surgery and instruments”, he explained about the functions of various surgical instruments, used for spliting, piercing and phlebotomizing, including Gamaneh, surgical blade, Makhda’, Nishtar and experiment rod, all of which were available for the surgeon to choose from as needed. The aim of this study, was to describe, design and evaluate the functional quality of a hypothetical module of the instrument “experiment rod”, used for piercing, as presented in Al-Tasrif.