Obsidian Blades

Refer to: Buck BA: Ancient technology in contemporary surgery (Information). West J Med 136:265-269, Mar 1982

Information

Ancient Technology in
Contemporary Surgery
BRUCE A. BUCK, MD, Twin Falls, Idaho

Archaeologists have shown that ancient man developed the ability to produce cutting blades of an extreme degree of sharpness from volcanic glass. The finest of these prismatic bladeswere produced in Mesoamerica about 2,500 years ago. The technique of production of these blades was rediscovered 12 years ago by Dr. Don Crabtree, who suggested possible uses for the blades in modern surgery. Blades produced by Dr. Crabtree have been used in experimental microsurgery with excellent results. Animal experiments have shown the tensile strength of obsidian produced wounds to be equal toor greater than that of wounds produced by steel scalpels after 14 days of healing. We have been able to demonstrate neither flaking of glass blades into the wounds nor any foreign body reaction in healed wounds. Skin incisions in human patients have likewise healed well without complications. The prismatic glass blade is infinitely sharper than a honed steel edge, and these blades can be producedin a wide variety of shapes and sizes. It is therefore suggested that this type of blade may find an appropriate use in special areas of modern surgery.
TWELVE YEARS AGO a technique was developed that allowed the manufacture of knife blades infinitely sharper than those in current surgical use. In these days of rapidly advancing technology, this fact might be of no more than passing interest.What is of interest, however, is the fact that this "new" technology of blade manufacture was but a rediscovery of a technique practiced up to 1 million years ago by ancient man. The material from which these blades were formed was stone. This article will attempt to trace the rediscovery of these remarkable cutting instruments, postulate
From the Department of Surgery, Magic Valley MemorialHospital; Herrett Museum, College of Southern Idaho, and SRI, Twin Falls, Idaho. Repnnt request to: Bruce A. Buck, MD, 496 C Shoup Avenue W., Twin Falls, ID 83301.

ancient uses and perhaps suggest a place for this technology in the practice of contemporary surgery.

History
We are all familiar with the stone instruments made for many centuries by cultures the world over before the availability ofmetals. These instruments range from the crude scrapers of 3 million years ago to exquisite spear points and arrowheads, which date from 14,000 years ago into the early 1900's in North America. Until very recently, many myths and mysteries have shrouded the method of manufacture of these artifacts. The first opportunity to learn sophisticated flint-knapping (the manufacture of tools
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from stone) from a "stone-age man" came in 1911, when a starving Indian presented himself to civilization in Northern California.' Fortunately, he was befriended by Professors Waterman, Kroeber and Gibson of the University of California Anthropology Department, and his techniques of flint-knapping were carefully studied. During this same era, otherswere attempting to duplicate the varying ancient technologies that had produced different types of instruments in Northern America and elsewhere in the world.2'3 Ishi, the last "wild Indian," died in the University of California Museum in San Francisco in 1916. Twenty years later, Professors Kroeber and Gibson had an assistant named Don Crabtree working in their lithic laboratory. He was pursuing aninterest in lithic technology that began when he was a child collecting artifacts near his Southern Idaho home. Largely self-taught, he developed a skill in the art of flint-knapping which few have matched. His major contributions, however, were the result of his approach to this science and art. He became one of the world's primary authorities on experimental archaeology.4 His scholarly study...