enty small wounds in the skin with a knife, he announced that "The
modern surgeons have, for Conveniency for themselves and Ease to the
Patient, contrived a Scarificator ... which consists of 16 small
Lancet-blades fixed in a cubical Brass Box, with a Steel Spring."[114]
Heister noted that while Pare had used the scarificator only for incipient
mortification, it was now "used with good success by our Cuppers in many
other Diseases, as I myself have frequently seen and experienced."[115]

The earliest scarificators were simple square brass boxes, with cocking
and release levers and 16 pointed blades. By 1780, illustrations in
surgical works showed that the bottom of the scarificator was detachable.
Thus, although the illustrations do not show the screw for regulating the
height of the blade cover, provision may already have been made for
adjusting the depth of cut of the blades.[116] Square or German-style
scarificators continued to be sold in Germany throughout the nineteenth
century. The earlier models (late eighteenth, early nineteenth century)
were frequently embellished with ornate decoration, and had pointed
blades. Some were quite tall. A specimen dated 1747, in the Wellcome
Medical Museum collection, is 14.4 cm high and 4.5 cm wide at the base.
(Figure 12.)

[Illustration: FIGURE 12.--Lavishly decorated scarificator, 18th century.
(Held by the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, London. Photo
courtesy of the Wellcome.)]

The later models (mid- to late nineteenth century) were wider and plainer
and had arched or crescent shaped blades (which made a cleaner lesion),
but the internal mechanism remained the same. Square scarificators all had
16 steel blades that cut in the same direction and were arranged on three
rods of five, six, and five blades respectively. At one end of each rod
was a gear pinion. The cocking lever, protruding through an aperture at
the top of the scarificator, broadened out into a flat plate with as many
gear sectors as blade rods. The plate was held against the interior of the
scarificator by a heavy support rod running the width of the scarificator,
in such a way that the gear sectors of the cocking lever meshed with the
pinions on the blade rods. Pulling up on the cocking lever turned the
blades 180 degrees. A heavy flat cantilever spring, attached at one end to
the bottom of the case, was caught under a protuberance on the cocking
lever and bent as the cocking lever was pul