At first glance, it's difficult to make out what they are.

Small corroded pieces of metal, roughly the length of modern flatware, all lined up on

a museum shelf.

But if you lean in and look past the rough surfaces of the objects, their purpose becomes clear.

They were surgical tools.

Discovered in 1989, inside the ruins of a third century Roman building known as the House

of the Surgeon, there are dozens of them.

Within the collection are a lot of items that are immediately recognizable, despite their

separation from modern medicine by 1800 years, things like scalples and forceps and small

iron needles.

It's easy to imagine their use and feel a sense of connection to the past while doing so.

Others are more mysterious, such as the various hooks and a spoon-shaped object that experts

think is a device called the Spoon of Diocletes, which was used to remove arrowheads from wounded

soldiers.

And then there are the tools that hint at a more barbaric time, like the large saw blades

and drill bits, used respectively to amputate limbs and drill holes in the skull, an ancient

technique known as treponation.

These dark, rough metal tools are a stark reminder to us of just how far we've come, technologically

speaking.

With our brightly lit, operating rooms, gleaming surgical steel and a vast assortment

of electronic instruments, medicine has come a long way, and no one would dispute the

value of that progress.

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