(Left) Mathieu's Tonsilotome: Steel and German silver; 19th century; 5,5 x 25,6 x 2,5 cm; Galante, Paris. (Middle) Mandeville's Tonsilotome: Wood, German silver and steel; 19th century; 14,5 x 24,5 x 2,2 cm; Galante, Paris. (Right) Uvulotome: Silver and steel; 19th century; 0,3 x 15,5 x 3 cm.

Tonsillectomy was described by Susruta (5th century B.C.) whose technique comprised a dissection made with a curve scalpel and a tweezer. Celso (c.25 B.C. - 50 a.C.) describes tonsillectomy with much more detail and in a much more similar way from the current surgery. He made a digital detachment, fixed with a hook and sectioned with a scalpel. Paulo de Egina (625-690), representative of the Byzantine School, liked this technique. Albucasis (936-1013) used a tongue depressor, a blunt ended scissors and a cautery. Fabricio de Aquapendente (1510-1590) used the cauterization and the ligature. Up to the first half of the 18th century (inclusive) Portuguese surgeons used a mouth gag, a tongue depressor for a wide exposition, and incised the tonsils with a lancet. A variety of pre and post surgical therapies were recommended as well as bleedings and dry cupping glasses (António Ferreira, 1683, pag.91-93; Feliciano de Almeida, 1715, pp. 156-158). For the uvula illnesses those national authors recommended the cupping glasses applied to the sagital suture, and its traction as well as the traction of this area hair, several times per day. It was said that this practice was responsible for the beneficial lifting of the uvula (António Ferreira, 1683, pp 156). António de Almeida in tomo III of the Tratado ("Tratado Completo de Medicina Operatória", 1825, Vol. III, page 4, nota 1) describes tonsillectomy by dissection, showing an absolute modernity. This method went out of use with the invention of the tonsillotomes.

"(...) To make the excision, the surgeon should choose the mean; which may be the ligature as in polypus, if the basis is thinner than the body, or a scalpel if we are not to tie. To use the scalpel the patient should be placed in front of a window, and we should open his/her mandible with a wedge or a speculum and hold the tonsil with the tenaculum while cleaning it from the flesh and separating it from the other parts. The scalpel should have a blunt shank, and the incision should have twelve or fourteen lines of extension as not to injury the surrounding areas. Some practitioners use the blunt ended scissors: however that instrument is not as good as the scalpel. If both tonsils should have to be excised, we should only excise the second one before the wound of the first one is cured." (António de Almeida, Tratado Completo de Medicina Operatória, Tratado Completo de Medicina Operatória, 1825, vol. III, pg. 4, nota 1).

In the 17th century Bartholin (1616-1680) invents the uvulotome. Based on this principle Benjamin Bell applied it to the tonsillectomy, which was successively modified by other authors. A tonsil guillotine conceived by Slüder (1865-1928) seized and luxated in an extra-capsular plane. The exhibited tonsillotomes obey to this principle. A real guillotine is underlined to the functioning of the exhibited uvulotome. The two tonsillotomes differ in the diameter of the ring of seizure since they are addressed to different age groups, and in the instrument general shape.