"Sherlock Holmes took his... hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of The Four (1890)
In 1853 the first practical hypodermic syringe, capable of penetrating the skin without the need for a prior incision, was developed simultaneously by the French surgeon Charles Gabriel Pravaz (1791-1853) working in Lyon, France, and Scottish physician Alexander Wood (1817-1884).
Pravaz's silver syringe included a piston with a screw adjustment to measure the administration of precise doses of blood-coagulating agents in treating aneurysms. Wood used a glass syringe that allowed him to monitor visually the injection of morphine in his treatment of patients with neuralgic disorders: Wood later added a graduated scale for more precise measurements. The syringe permitted for the first time the intravenous administration of anesthesia and helped eliminate many of the difficulties faced in the still experimental realm of blood transfusions. Neither versions, of course, would have been possible without the hollow-point needle, which was invented nine years earlier, in 1844, by Irish physician Francis Rynd.
Prior to the seventeenth century, urethral syringes made from pewter, bone, and silver were common, and by the mid-seventeenth century attempts were being made to deliver medication by intravenous means through animal skins. Sir Christopher Wren participated in experiments in which animals were injected via a hollow tube cut from a quill pen. In the early 1800s blisters were generated so the. skin could then be peeled back and the drug administered. Post- 1853 refinements included detachable needles and all-glass syringes, which greatly reduced the incidence of infections.
