fromSlate Magazine
2 weeks agoDoctors Have Been Using an Ancient Medical Device on Women for Millennia. We're Only Just Now Realizing There's a Better Way.
If you look past the rust, an ancient Roman speculum is instantly recognizable as an instrument a gynecologist might put inside you today. There are two curved metal bills, a screw to hold them apart, and the ghostly echo across the eons of a patient grunting in pain as the doctor employs it. For centuries, the speculum's job has been simple and essential: Hold apart the walls of the vagina so a clinician can see inside it, all the way up to the cervix.
Medicine