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Is There Still a Place for the Head Mirror?

by Gina Roberts-Grey •

Of course, there are always situations in which a headlight is necessary: in the operating room, at the bedside or in the emergency department when a patient is lying down and there’s no light behind the patient allowing use of a mirror.

Many doctors, however, say their colleagues should be familiar with and competent in using both head mirrors and lights. “The practice environment will often dictate which of the two is best suited,” Dr. Blair said.

Timeline of the Head Mirror

Timeline of the Head Mirror

Although it is one of modern medicine’s oldest inventions still in use, the head mirror hasn’t required any improvements or changes in the past 100 years. Here’s a brief history of its unique origins.

1743

  • A French accouncheur named Levert devises a bent mirror for examining the larynx.

1807

  • German physician Bozzini publishes his account of using a “lighted conductor and speculum.” He uses a wax candle for a light source and a mirror in the throat to visualize the glottis.

1829

  • British physician Benjamin Guy Babington presents a diagnostic instrument that uses a mirror and epiglottic retractor to the Hunterian Society of London. He later modifies his instrument, removing the retractor, and uses only a polished stainless steel mirror.

1844

  • Avery modifies the Palmer’s lamp used by miners to concentrate direct candle light down a modification of Bozzini’s speculum.
Czermak using his laryngoscope; the head mirror is held in the mouth.

Czermak using his laryngoscope; the head mirror is held in the mouth.

1854

  • Renowned Spanish voice teacher and singer Manuel Garcia first visualizes his own larynx using a dental mirror and second hand-held mirror that reflects sunlight to illuminate his throat.

1855

  • Garcia presents his experiment to the Royal Society of Medicine and catches the attention of the medical community.

1857

  • Ludwig Turck, professor of laryngology in Vienna, unsuccessfully tries out Garcia’s mirrors experiments on patients. Many believe his failure to invent a successful head mirror came courtesy of the failing autumnal Viennese sunlight. Later that year, University of Budapest professor of physiology Johann Nepomuk Czermak, a non-laryngologist, borrows Turck’s mirrors and develops a method of using them along with magnified candlelight.

1858

  • Czermak presents his successful findings to the Viennese medical community and is catapulted into history as the inventor of the head mirror.