Benjamin Franklin invented the flexible catheter in 1752. (Trivia, but interesting)

I'm sure we were all aware that founding father Benjamin Franklin was a remarkably gifted scientist and inventor.

But one thing I didn't know about until I came across it recently was that among his inventions was a version of the modern flexible catheter.

According to the article "Catheter" in Wikipedia,

"…Extending his inventiveness to his family's medical problems, Benjamin Franklin invented the flexible catheter in 1752 when his brother John suffered from bladder stones."

But the article then goes on to describe the device: "… Franklin's catheter was made of metal with segments hinged together with a wire enclosed to provide rigidity during insertion."

Which doesn't exactly make it sound like the kind of catheter that a lot of us would want to line up for a chance to try it out. Nevertheless, credit to Franklin for coming up with the invention, primitive as it was, since it could only be made with materials available at the time.

Incidentally, the article also goes on to say that the modern flexible catheter was probably actually invented around 1720, but Franklin much improved on it. Which makes one wonder what kind of treatment, if any, was available for guys with urinary blockage symptoms before that time. Leeches for bloodletting and "balancing the humors," I suppose? (For all the good that would have done).

Granted this isn't a really important topic, but maybe a little interesting.

Made from metal?? I wouldn't try Ben Franklin's key on the kite trick with that thing stuck in me!

alephnull -

Your comment about cauterizing was interesting to me because the same night that I was reading about Franklin's catheter (resulting in this thread), I also, being in a "reading history of medicine" mood that night I guess, did some reading on another site about Civil War medicine.

I read about the use of cauterizing irons by both North and South medical staffs to seal battlefield wounds of troops. It seems they would keep ready in a nearby campfire a long, narrow piece of iron, usually with a wooden handle, and would keep the iron heated in the fire until it was red-hot. Then, when the wound of a soldier needed to be sealed, orderlies would hold the guy down, while the field doctor would take hold of the hotiron and press it firmly down on the wound. This would produce two effects. First, a cloud of steam rising up from the wound, and then a loud hissing noise, caused by contact of the hot iron with flesh, surpassed only, no doubt, by the screaming of the soldier. Apparently that was the best they could do back then.

Hence we are right to breathe a sigh of relief about the vastly superior quality of medicine today, as has been already noted in this thread. But the point I wanted to make in posting this comment about cauterizing is to mention something that occurred to me while I was reading about its use in the Civil War. Something I found to be rather amusing.

Yes, medical techniques are vastly superior today, and we are all grateful for that. But sometimes it actually seems that things don't really change that much! Take for example the cauterization of wounds, dating from the Civil War and even earlier. Now isn't that, in a very real way, just exactly what was done on those of us who had radiation applied to our prostates? Yes, there was no pain from the RT, and the treatment was internal rather than exterior, but I submit that the treatment principal was the very same, the use of a strong heating force to eliminate the problem! So maybe an RT machine is just, in a way, one great big sophisticated version of a cauterizing iron.

So what's the point, that the more things change, the more they stay the same? Perhaps, but it is also unquestionably the case that medicine is vastly superior to and infinitely more pain-free than medicine from the past.

Of course a century or so from now both RT and a cauterizing iron will appear equally barbaric to a 22nd century medical establishment that will treat PCa, if it still exists, in some kind of pain-free and perfect way that would astonish us now.

But in the meantime amusements and even ironies of treatment, such as I have discussed, abound.

Rather interesting, I would say.