Hypodermic needles

A hypodermic needle (from Greek ὑπο- (under-), and δέρμα (skin)), one of a category of medical tools which enter the skin, called sharps, is a very thin, hollow tube with a sharp tip which contains a small opening at the pointed end. It is commonly used with a syringe, a hand-operated device with a plunger, to inject substances into the body (e.g., saline solution, solutions containing various drugs or liquid medicines) or extract fluids from the body (e.g., blood). They are used to take liquid samples from the body, for example taking blood from a vein in venipuncture. Large bore hypodermic intervention is especially useful in catastrophic blood loss or treating shock.

A hypodermic needle is used for rapid delivery of liquids, or when the injected substance cannot be ingested, either because it would not be absorbed (as with insulin), or because it would harm the liver. There are many possible routes for an injection, with the arm being a common location.

The hypodermic needle also serves an important role in research environments where sterile conditions are required. The hypodermic needle significantly reduces contamination during inoculation of a sterile substrate. The hypodermic needle reduces contamination for two reasons: First, its surface is extremely smooth, which prevents airborne pathogens from becoming trapped between irregularities on the needle's surface, which would subsequently be transferred into the media (e.g. agar) as contaminants; second, the needle's surface is extremely sharp, which significantly reduces the diameter of the hole remaining after puncturing the membrane, which consequently prevents microbes larger than this hole from contaminating the substrate.

The ancient Greeks and Romans knew injection as a method of medicinal delivery from observations of snakebites and poisoned weapons. There are also references to "anointing" and "inunction" in the Old Testament as well as the works of Homer, but injection as a legitimate medical tool was not truly explored until the 17th century.Christopher Wren performed the earliest confirmed experiments with crude hypodermic needles, performing intravenous injection into dogs in 1656. These experiments consisted of using animal bladders (as the syringe) and goose quills (as the needle) to administer drugs such as opium intravenously to dogs. Wren and others’ main interest was to learn if medicines traditionally administered orally would be effective intravenously. In the 1660s, J.D. Major of Kiel and J.S. Elsholtz of Berlin were the first to experiment with injections in humans. These early experiments were generally ineffective and in some cases fatal. Injection fell out of favor for two centuries.

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