Who invented the "Spoon of Diocles"?

Diocles of Carystus (c. 375 BC – c. 295 BC) was a well-regarded Greek physician, born in Carystus, a city on Euboea, Greece. His significance was as a major thinker, practitioner, and writer of the fourth century. He was the inventor of the Spoon of Diocles, a surgical instrument for the extraction of weapons or missiles such as barbed arrowheads that were embedded into the body.

He lived not long after the time of Hippocrates, to whom Pliny says he was next in age and fame. Not much is known of his life, other that he lived and worked in Athens, where he wrote what may be the first medical treatise.

His most important work was in practical medicine, especially diet and nutrition, but he also wrote the first systematic textbook on animal anatomy. According to a number of sources, he was the first to use the word "anatomy" to describe the study. He belonged to the medical sect of the Dogmatici, and wrote several medical works, of which only the titles and some fragments remain, preserved by Galen, Caelius Aurelianus, Oribasius, and other ancient writers.

He insisted that health requires an understanding of the nature of the universe and its relationship to man. He emphasised that nerves are the channels of sensations and that interference with them is directly involved in the pathology of disease.

His fragments have been recently collected and translated in English by Philip van der Eijk (an expert on ancient philosophy, and the history of ancient medicine).