Medical instruments in museums: immediate impressions and historical meanings

This essay proposes that our understanding of medical instruments might benefit from adding a more forthright concern with their immediate presence to the current historical focus on simply decoding their meanings and context. This approach is applied to the intriguingly tricky question of what actually is meant by a "medical instrument." It is suggested that a pragmatic part of the answer might lie simply in reconsidering the holdings of medical museums, where the significance of the physical actuality of instruments comes readily to hand.