"Count your blessings; in the old days, they had to send a sketch-artist up there."
Two and a Half Men (2003) on colonoscopy
The first eridoscope was the Lichtleiter (light-guiding instrument) developed by Philipp Bozzini (1773-1809) of Vienna, Austria, and demonstrated in 1805. Using the reflected light of a candle in a series of lenses, he was able to see inside the urinary tract, rectum, and throat. Suspicion within the medical community and his early death brought endoscopy to a halt. In 1853, Antoine Jean Desormeaux, a French surgeon, modified the Lichtleiter. He used a system of mirrors and lenses, a lamp flame for illumination that burned alcohol and turpentine, and the occasional patient. He was also the first to use the term endoscope.
Dr. Adolph Kussmaul of Germany was the first to look inside the stomach of a living human with an endoscope in 1868. He did this with an 18-inch (47cm) long, Va-inch (13 mm) diameter tube that was tested on a sword swallower. Much to the relief of patients, in 1932 Dr. Rudolph Schindler invented a partly flexible endoscope. By the 1960s, fiber optics were being Incorporated and endoscopes are now very flexible with a small diameter.
Dr. William Beaumont had jooked inside a living stomach years earlier without the aid of an endoscope. On June 6, 1822, a French-Canadian voyager named Alexis St, Martin was shot in the upper left abdomen. The wound was "more than the size of the palm of a man's hand" and it failed to close completely. Through the fistula, Beaumont was able to see inside St. Martin's stomach and place different foods to be digested. He thus learned that stomach acid has solvent properties and requires heat to work. Beaumont was to be known as "the father of gastric physiology,"
