The Stubs Iron Wire Gauge system is used in medicine to measure the diameter of hypodermic needles, catheters, and suture wires. It was originally developed in early 19th-century England for use in wire manufacture, and it began appearing in a medical setting in the early 20th century. Medicine is the branch of health science and the sector of public life concerned with maintaining human health or restoring it through the treatment of disease and injury. ... For the geometric term, see diameter. ... Different bevels on hypodermic needles Syringe on left, hypodermic needle with attached color-coded luer lock on right. ... Catheter disassembled In medicine, a catheter is a tube that can be inserted into a body cavity duct or vessel. ... A wound before and after being closed by sutures Sutures are the stitches doctors, and especially surgeons, use to hold skin, internal organs, blood vessels and all other tissues of the human body together, after they have been severed by injury or surgery. ... A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, elongated strand of drawn metal. ...
The Stubs system was the first wire gauge recognized as a standard by any country when Great Britain adopted it in 1884. Each gauge increment roughly correlates to multiples of .01 inches, but the system can be quite confusing because it is not truly linear, as can be seen in the Needle gauge comparison chart. More confusing still, the gauge number increases as diameter decreases, so a 33-gauge needle is relatively tiny and a 7-gauge is huge. Mid-19th century tool for converting between different standards of the inch An inch is an Imperial and U.S. customary unit of length. ...