Instruments from a mail boat, 1910, A.J. Coster Rotterdam
Inv V08711

As a ship’s doctor you must always be prepared for the worst, since anything can happen during a voyage, from serious, sometimes infectious diseases to major injuries as a result of accidents.
In the instrument case of the ship’s doctor you consequently find an extensive and non-specialised set of instruments, with which he could deal with the most frequent medical dangers. It is striking that besides modern diagnostic instruments like the sphygmometer, there is also a ‘scarifier’. This instrument, which originated in the seventeenth century, was used in blood-letting, a procedure which one would assume was, at least from a scientific point of view, long out of fashion by 1910. Things were obviously different in practice!