Journal - International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine

History of Endoscopy*
Mostafa SHEHATA*
* Prof.Dr., Otolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt
e-mail : m_shehataahoo.com
Since early time, man tried hardly to visualise the
inside of the human body, through the natural openings
and passages of the body. Due to lack of sufficient
anatomical knowledge, facilities and technology
it was very difficult or even impossible.
Early History
Early trials appeared 5000 years ago in ancient
Egypt during the process of mummification of the
dead persons, where they used a rigid metal tube
passed through the nose to its upper part to pierce the
cribriform plate to the cranial cavity to evacuate its
content (1).
The subsequent trial appeared 2000 years later
when Hippocrates (460-377 B.C), the great Greek
physician tried to help a poor shepherd suffering
from respiratory distress due to a large peritonsillar
abscess. He advised him to pass a hollow stick pipe
to the oropharynx and breathe through it, till he evacuated
the abscess. A procedure considered an early
primitive rigid endoscopy for therapeutic purpose (2).
The 10th Century
Late in the 10th Century, during the early Islamic
period a new endoscopic trial appeared. Avicenna
(980-1034), the eminent physician of the middle age
period advocated intubation of the larynx, using a
curved metal tube made of gold, passed orally and
Summary
Endoscopy by its different routes and techniques has very much widely opened the way to visualise all the body passages, cavities
and hollow organs. It has come to the present state of excellence through the improved visual access into these dark areas.
Through the application of developments of the physics of optics, endoscopy has entered into a period of rapid expansion, new
information and new therapeutic techniques. This made different lesions and foreign bodies well visualised and properly managed,
with a high degree of efficiency.
Key Words; Endoscopy, History of Medicine.
guided by the index finger to pass through the larynx.
He aimed to help patients of stridor to have better respiration
(2).
The 19th Century
Through the subsequent centuries and the
European renaissance nothing was added to the
progress of endoscopy. Early in the 19th century
primitive metal endoscopic instruments appeared and
were used for the diagnosis of the different lesions of
the upper respiratory tract.
The earliest and the first endoscopic instrument
were the laryngoscope. The primitive type was a simple
silver tube illuminated proximally by a candle
and the light is reflected by a mirror, invented by
Philip Bozzini in Frankfurt in 1807 (3,16).
Benjamin Babington improved this in 1829 using
reflected sunlight (4).
A modified instrument was later described by
Ludvig Türk in Vienna in 1858, and Johann Czermak
in Prague in 1858 and Adolph Kusmaul in 1869 (4,5).
Alfred Kirstein later perfected this in 1895, who
developed the first direct laryngoscopy (3-5).
It should be noted that the study of diseases of the
larynx and hypopharynx was greatly stimulated by
the invention of the laryngeal mirror for indirect
60 JISHIM 2004, 3