Why is gynecology still using a Civil War-era tool?

According to The 19th, the tool at the center of many gynecological exams — the speculum — traces its basic design back to the Civil War era, and patients are questioning why so little has changed. The report opens with Taylor Townsell, a thirty-two-year-old who was told her IUD insertion would feel like "just a pinch." Instead, she described a bright, electric pain, as though her body had become nothing but nerve endings, and she passed out. The piece frames her experience as part of a broader reckoning over how gynecology manages, or dismisses, patient pain during routine procedures.

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