For a quick break from the marvels of modern medicine, look no further than the gruesome tools used to hack people apart during the eighteenth century.

Up for auction this week are two amputation kits used during the American Revolutionary War by Dr. John Warren, a Continental Army surgeon who co-founded Harvard Medical School in 1782. The kits sport clumsy, oddly curved, and painfully jagged instruments, including dull saws and indelicate pinchers. The tools were used to coarsely remove limbs, cutting through bones and shoving aside arteries at a time when musket balls left gaping wounds, sterilization and hygiene weren't appreciated, and anesthesia often consisted of rum and a wooden stick to bite down on. Amputations were fairly common during the war, yet frequently deadly.

Because the Continental Army had little equipment, many doctors had to rely on their own personal tools. This was the case with these two kits owned by Dr. Warren (below).

Warren was a noted surgeon at the time and the younger brother to Joseph Warren, also a surgeon and soldier. The elder was a Major General in the colony’s militia, whose brutal death at the Battle of Bunker Hill was immortalized in John Trumbull's oil painting, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill (shown below).





After that, the younger Dr. Warren tended to the wounded in General Washington’s troops from 1776 to 1777. He treated soldiers at the Battle of Long Island, the Battle of Princeton, and the Battle of Trenton. In 1777, he returned to Boston to resume medical practice, serving as a military surgeon in an army hospital there and becoming a notable medical lecturer.

The two kits on auction include one covered in shark and ray skins, referred to as the shagreen kit, and the other in a mahogany case, referred to as the mahogany kit. The two kits are valued at around $50,000. Bidding is open until 6pm ET July 12.

According to the auctioneers, the shagreen kit measures 19.5 x 7.75 x 3 inches and contains a bullet forceps with scissor handles, tissue forceps, a grooved director, a Petit-style tourniquet, bow-framed metacarpal saw (used for small bones), and an extra blade for a large amputation saw.

Included inside the hinged covers is a hand-written card from the 19th-century that notes the kit's history. It reads, “Revolutionary Instruments given by Joseph Warren to John Warren to John C. Warren to Henry J. Bigelow. Copy of letter describing them in possession of J. Collins Warren.”









The mahogany kit measures 18.75 x 7 x 2 inches and contains a capital amputation saw, with a wooden-handled instrument with hexagonal nut to adjust the blade; a curved amputation knife; surgical scissors; and tissue forceps (possibly non-original). One scalpel is absent.

On the front edge is a nailed, faintly written 19th-century identification label that reads: “Used during the Revolutionary War by Dr. John Warren.”











The two kits are valued at around $50,000. Bidding is open until 6pm ET July 12.