ABSTRACT
The closing of surgical wounds using catgut or thread sutures is widely known but a forerunner of these materials will come as a surprise to most people. In an early medical text by Albucasis 1 it is stated in Latin: ‘Deinde aggrega duo labia vulneris et pone fornicam unam ex eis que habebant os apertum super duo labia vulneris’. This refers to sewing up the colon with a kind of ant with a big head. As soon as the ant has closed up its mouth, the head is cut off and it rests attached to the wound. Immediately a second ant is used for the following suture, and so on, until the entire wound is closed. The method had previously been described by the ancient Hindu surgeon Susruta who recommended the heads of red ants, and this practice was even followed in the nineteenth century 2 in the war between the Greeks and the Turks in 1821 when Turkish surgeons followed this method.
