Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 July 8

= July 8 =

How to find what's the length of these specific ancient roman surgical tools
How to find what's the length of these specific ancient surgical tools? --ThePupil (talk) 17:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Find out from the photo's ultimate source which museum or other custodian holds them, and enquire directly. Trying to play at photogrammetry with no scalable clues would be a fool's game, since whatever approximations might be deduced from estimations of likely handle dimensions (for example) would doubtless be deemed insufficiently accurate. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.56.20 (talk) 14:30, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure is hard to imagine how the axe-headed one could be a surgical tool. I've replaced the Google link with a Wikimedia link. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 20:29, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Which leads to Wellcome Images as the original source, where it describes them as: "A)Rreplica of Roman bronze scalpel, from Silchester. B) No information. C) Scalpel or knife. Bronze, Roman, spear shaped. D)Axe-headed instruments. Bronze, Graeco-Roman E) No number F)Model of Roman Lancet of bronze, decorated handle." I tried Google searches on "axe-headed surgical instrument" and "bronze surgical instrument" and didn't find anything useful. (About these particular instruments, I mean, including the ax-headed one.) --174.89.49.204 (talk) 22:55, 9 July 2020 (UTC), revised later.
 * The Wellcome Collection link is here, although they are closed at present, they might respond to an email.
 * Surgical Instruments from Ancient Rome from the University of Virginia helpfully has sizes on their images, although they don't really match the objects in the Wellcome image. Alansplodge (talk) 14:29, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * This image of a bone lever, similar to the 2nd and 5th objects, has a scale on it, but I don't know what units are being used. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 16:22, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah-ha. Back to the Virginia pictures. The bone levers are shown to be 11.4 and 11.7 cm, 4.5 and 4.625 inches. This would indicate to me that the black and white scale on the picture I mention above is in inches and cm. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 16:29, 10 July 2020 (UTC)