Certainly no device in the history of medicine has been more popular for the control of bleeding than the tourniquet. The application of pressure to control blood loss is a natural reaction, though it was not until 1674 that Morell reported the use of a field tourniquet when he attached a cord to a wooden rod, and twisted it to achieve hemostasis. Here illustrated are the two most common methods of controlling blood loss in the nineteenth century.

Jean-Louis Petit invented this very screw device as as way of managing bleeding in 1718; similar devices are still in use today.

This large tourniquet would have been used to control abdominal bleeding or following the amputation of a lower extremity.

This is a smaller tourniquet to be used on the upper extremity.

One of the earliest and one of the most feared techniques of hemostasis was the cautery. While there was almost instant hemostasis, this technique also provided the patient with a degree of wound sterilization.

This is a cased set of mid eighteenth century cauteries by Mariaud, each to be used for a different part of the body.

This instrument was to be used specifically to cauterize a gunshot wound.

Another of the many contributions by the great sixteenth century French surgeon Ambroise Pare was his use of the ligature for the control of bleeding. Here are a number of early suturing techniques.

Catgut was one of several animal materials that has been used as suture material through the nineteenth century.