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the larynx-stereoscope

The larynx-stereoscope we present constitutes a particular object, not common within specialists’ clinical material at the beginning of the 20th Century. A technology based upon two instruments: stereoscopic photography and the laryngoscope.

The development of photography on the 19th Century introduced a new form of scientific interpretation of medical illustration as an auxiliary element to the practice of medicine. Clinical photography developed in Catalonia with great difficulty along the second half of the 19th Century, above all through the work of individual physicians, not institutionally, and specifically in the field of microphotography. At the end of the century, the power to record through photography increased because of new technologies, such as anastigmatic lenses –not cylindrical- or technical innovations such as photographic stereoscopy. The stereoscope had been designed by Englishman Charles Wheatstone on 1840, from his own explanation of binocular vision, thus showing that the sensation of solidity is achieved through the combination of two separated flat images in the brain, each seen through a different eye.

It was also by the half of the 19th Century when the architecture of the larynx and the direct sight of its inner injuries, fundamental aim of anatomical-clinical semiology, was definitely achieved through the work on singing maestro Manuel García’s vocal cords. The larynx stopped being an inner organ to physicians and the laryngoscope, not without setbacks, became an essential instrument to explore and establish the diagnosis of the cavity. If along the second half of the 19th Century laryngoscopy became an ordinary method of examination, it was not till the end of the century when Alfred Kirstein (1895) was able to develop direct laryngoscopy by applying the light bulb to an esophagoscope.

The stereoscopic photography camera we show was devised by French physician Jean Garel and made by manufacturer Henri Peter in Lyon on those years. In fact, on 1897, Dr. Garel published in Paris an Atlas stéréoscopique d’anatomie du nez et du larynx, which included 30 stereo-photographs of regular and pathological anatomy of the above mentioned organs. The objectivation of larynx pathologies through photographic recording contributed to a better anatomical description and classification and allowed laryngology to consolidate as a specialty in its own right. The specialty of otorhinolaryngology was not imparted in the faculty of medicine of Barcelona until the end of 1915.