Surgical suture father of medicine, Hippocrates, described suture techniques, as did the later Roman Aulus Cornelius Celsus. The 2nd-century Roman physician Galen described gut sutures. In the 10th century, the catgut suture along with the surgery needle were developed by Abulcasis. The catgut suture was similar to that of strings for violins, guitar, and tennis racquet and it involved harvesting sheep intestines. Joseph Lister endorsed the routine sterilization of all suture threads. He first attempted sterilization with the 1860s "carbolic catgut," and chromic catgut followed two decades later. Sterile catgut was finally achieved in 1906 with iodine treatment. The next great leap
Strings (tennis) stringing may be a good alternative to natural gut and multi-filament strings. This is especially true for those who have had tennis elbow and find natural gut string to be too costly. Metal wire, usually piano wire, was used in some historical racquets. The "gauge" number determines the thickness of the string. A string rated with a high gauge number is a thinner string, and vice versa. Thinner strings typically offer higher performance but break more frequently than thicker strings. Virtually all modern raquets are strung in a criss-cross horizontal-vertical pattern. Various other patterns have been used in history with