1920's CLAUSTRO-THERMAL' PATENT SURGICAL SUTURES 6 TUBES/BOX DAVIS-GECK
This week on Ebay, we are offering up this very rare, early, circa 1920's box of vintage, original Davis & Geck 'Claustro-Thermal' Catgut surgical sutures.
This was an original box of 12 glass tubes of Catgut suture, but has been opened and only has 6 original tubes left.
The tubes are in excellent, clean, complete condition and the box still has it's original bumper pad and 'Claustro-Thermal' insert.
Davis & Geck's 1916 Patent for their 'Claustro-Thermal' suture sterilization process was a major milestone in surgery and changed how, where and when surgery could be performed.
It introduced simple, easy to use 'Boilable' sutures to the medical world and revolutionized Medicine.
Regular sutures in glass tubes are old and cool, but rather common.
This box of 6 tubes of Catgut are marked 'Claustro-Thermal' and are rare early examples of the very first 'pre-packaged' Catgut sutures ever produced.
A historic moment in Surgery and Medicine, and a cool item to add to any Medical memorabilia collection.
The box is clearly marked as shown in my pictures. Each individual tube of Catgut surgical sutures is marked:
"Davis Geck Inc Brooklyn, N.Y. USA"
"CLAUSTRO-THERMAL"
"Catgut Sutures U.S.P"
"PLAIN TYPE A"
"In Excess of 18 inches"
"Boilable O 802"
6 tubes of clean, sealed, size 'O' Catgut in a clean bautiful box.
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THE HISTORY OF 'CLAUSTRO-THERMAL' CATGUT SUTURES
Catgut had been used for Centuries as an effective absorbable suture material. Catgut was made of long strands of collagen fibers, usually obtained from the intestines of animals.
The emergence of 'Germ Theory' in the 1870's changed surgeons ideas about using sutures. Now the suture materials had to be more than 'clean', they had to be sterile before using them.
In order to sterilize Catgut sutures, they had be be washed thoroughly, dried completely, and then usually heated or boiled for a period of time.
Being a natural material, any water left behind caused Catgut to start degrading. Plus the act of boiling it caused the collagen protein structure to break down into Gelatin.
In addition to that, the fibers of collagen often had minute traces of Fat and other animal contaminants imbedded in them.
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Catgut was an essential suturing material at the end of the 1800's and early 1900's, nothing was found that could replace it, so there was intense scientific research being done to find ways to sterilize Catgut without damaging it, reducing it's strength, or changing the rate at which it dissolved in the body.
Famous British surgeon Joseph Lister was one of the first to bring sterile technique into the operating room. Lister used to 'treat' his suture material in order to try to sterilize it.
Before Lister, surgeons operated in their street clothes, used the same dirty surgical tools on different patients and used clean, but unsterilized, sutures to close wounds.
Lister changed all that.
He famously sprayed and soaked his Catgut, and other suture materials, with Carbolic Acid (Phenol) to disinfect them.
In 1881 he added chromium salts and chromic acid to his sutures, inventing 'Chromic Gut' in the process.
Catgut, both 'plain' and 'chromic' soon became the standard 'absorbable' suture material preferred by doctors.
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Surgeons realized that Catgut, and other suture materials, had to be 'processed' and sterilized prior to using it for surgery, but, by the late 1800's this 'process' often involved using multiple dangerous, toxic, often flammable solvents, specialized equipment, careful sterile technique, and hours of soaking and preparation.
The process also required precise timing and temperature control. Too low a temperature, the catgut wasn't sterile, too high a temperature, the catgut changed physical characteristics and was useless.
Preparing sterile Catgut was a slow, tedious, time consuming, dangerous, labor intensive process, but more importantly, at each stage, sterility could be compromised, ruining the whole batch.
Physicians also soon realized that the heat, solvents and chemicals, while greatly reducing bacteria, also reduced the quality, strength and reliability of some of the suture materials, especially the urgently needed Catgut.
Catgut was essential at the time, but was easily damaged by water, as well as boiling it, heating it, and by the strong chemicals used to sterilize it.
Suddenly, the race was on to find new ways to sterilize Catgut, and other sutures, without altering their strength, flexibility, or other physical characteristics, such as how quickly or slowly they 'absorbed' in the body.
Various alternative methods were tried. By 1906, Catgut treated with Iodine salts seemed to be the best and safest option.
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Davis and Geck, a large medical device company in Brooklyn, who supplied most of the sutures to physicians at the time, was eagerly trying to find a solution to the problem and 'save' Catgut.
In 1915, Charles T. Davis, one of the heads of Davis & Geck, came up with a solution which he called 'Claustro-Thermal' processing. It was an ingenious new method of commercially preparing Catgut in hermetically sealed glass tubes.
Sutures had been prepared in sealed glass tubes for a decade or so, but Davis came up with a brilliant new system.
It was learned early on that the collagen in Catgut sutures shrank, contracted, and thickened in the presence of excess heat or water, making them irregular in diameter, markedly diminishing tensile strength, and making them have little or no value for use in suturing.
At the Davis & Geck factory, Catgut was carefully prepared, measured, cut into lengths, formed into bundles and then placed inside open-ended sterile glass tubes.
Then thru careful gentle heating, any water vapor was removed, as even a small amount of water starts to convert the collagen in the catgut into gelatin, which when later heated, becomes weak, brittle, and deformed.
Davis' method removed all the water, without changing the physical properties of the catgut.
Then a specially designed organic 'fluid' was added, gently heated into a vapor, to drive out any air, then the glass tubes were hermetically sealed.
When the tubes cooled down, a natural, water-free, air-free, vacuum was created inside the glass tube.
The 'genius' part, for which Davis was awarded a Patent in 1916, was the carefully designed, unique, organic solution that he used.
Davis called it "Xylol" but it was a combination of Isopropanol, Toluene, and other organic solvents. It boiled at a very low temperature.
The Catgut was now sealed in a sterile, airtight, water-less, glass container containing a chemical 'Xylol' that acted as both a preservative and a sterilizing agent.
When stored at room temperature, the fluid was liquid and acted as a preservative and storage solution, keeping the Catgut sutures soft, supple and fresh.
The other ingenious idea Davis came up with was that the precise amount of fluid in the tube was very carefully calculated, so that when the tube was boiled in simple water, at 100 degrees, the highly volatile liquid in the tube, with a very low boiling point, completely turned into gas or vapor, creating high pressure inside the sealed glass tube, which sterilized not just the surface, but forced the Xylol molecules deep into the Catgut to penetrate it and ensure sterilization.
The precise amount of liquid in the tube had to be enough volume to create sufficient pressure in the tube when vaporized, to penetrate the Catgut, but not enough volume to cause high pressure to break the glass vial.
Too little fluid, the vapor pressure wouldn't penetrate the catgut, too much fluid, the pressure would break the glass.
The organic vapors had a second effect, which was to be a solvent and 'wash out' any small amount of remaining fat, fatty acids, and animal tissue contaminants that may have remained in the catgut.
These small amounts of animal products often caused local inflammation and irritation inside patients.
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Shortly after boiling, while the 'Xylol' solvent inside is still a vapor, the tube is snapped open, along a carefully etched break line, releasing the vapor, and the sterilized, clean, dry, Catgut suture was ready to be used.
Typically, the suture bundle was very briefly dunked in sterile water to 'soften' it and remove any unlikely contaminants, and you were ready to sew.
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Davis' brilliant 'Claustro-Thermal' invention completely revolutionized Catgut suture preparation and surgery.
At the time, it represented the culmination of the very latest turn-of-the-Century technology in Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Glassmaking, and commercial industrialization, which blended together to create a product that not only saved Catgut as a surgical suture material, but changed medicine.
Davis' invention eliminated the need for expensive equipment, toxic chemicals, and the time consuming procedures that were necessary to sterilize catgut the old way.
Now all you had to do was simply sterilize the pre-packaged tubes in plain boiling water for a period of time, right alongside the other surgical tools and instruments, and your catgut essentially prepared itself.
Davis called his new technique 'Claustro-Thermal' but it was soon known by it's common name "Boilable" for it's ease of use and preparation.
Finally, there was a simple, reliable, consistent, easy way to sterilize Catgut on the market and 'Boilable Suture' sales took off.
As mentioned, Davis received a Patent in 1916 for his 'Claustro-thermal' catgut packaging idea, making Davis-Geck millions.
Davis & Geck's "Claustro-Thermal" catgut wasn't cheap, but it was so revolutionary and ingenious that it became the standard way to package all types of suture materials up until the 1950s when Gamma radiation and gas became the new norm for sterilization.
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Davis' invention came in 1916, just in time before WWI broke out.
The fact that you could now prepare sterile high quality sutures anywhere you had boiling water completely changed medicine.
Rural and small-town physicians could suture in their offices. Small procedures could be performed just about anywhere.
Nowhere was the advent of new convenient 'boilable' sutures more important that on the battlefields of WWI. Anywhere you could boil water, you could prepare sterile absorbable sutures. They no doubt saved countless lives during WWI.
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This box of early Davis & Geck 'Claustro-Thermal' Catgut sutures is a perfect example of the type of Medical items that I've been collecting over many decades. Cool, interesting items that changed the direction and practice of American Medicine over the years.
It would be of interest to surgeons and physicians, but to anyone interested in science, technology and innovation.
The box displays great and the little glass vials have a fascinating story to tell. As mentioned above, there are 6 vials of Catgut sutures left in this box that originally contained 12.
An interesting item that deserves to be in any collection of Medical memorabilia.
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