In 1949, J. Deryl Hart, MD, then Chair of Surgery and future President of Duke University, opened Duke’s Surgical Instrument Shop, which was charged with building “anything to aid [healthcare practitioners] in their work and studies.” Alongside myriad surgical instruments, its products included a well-known “Duke University Inhaler” for administering trichloroethylene anesthesia and a folding operating table. As a medical student, I walked by the original site of the Instrument Shop every day, and as a trained surgeon I’ve appreciated how surgical instruments extend my ability to reach into difficult places, dissect tissues at odd angles, and rejoin tissues after injury.
