The Doctor’s Medical Kit – Sean O’ Dea
My favourite artefact from the museum was the doctor’s medical kit from the 20th century.
The doctor’s medical kit came in an old, brown tattered briefcase. In the medical kit there was a book with diagrams that showed the doctor how to do specific surgeries on a patient. The pages in the book were very fragile and a bit tattered looking. There was also a notebook with the doctor’s personal handwriting in it and some of the equipment that he used back then, for example, a needle.
It is possible that he was an eye doctor because of the surgeries that were listed in his book.
A lot of great tools and inventions were made in the 20th century such as Laser Cataract Surgery which is when lasers break up and remove cataracts from your eye and implant replacement lenses. Doctors started using chloroform as an anaesthesia in the 20th century.
The reason I picked this artefact is because I found it really interesting the way it showed how doctors operated back then. I also found it fascinating that you could see the doctor’s own handwriting from that period of time.