Prior to his post as physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the Greek physician Galen (129–circa 200–216) worked for several years gaining experience in the management of trauma as physician in a gladiator school. There he described using sutures for the purposes of haemostasis and tendon repair.

Lord Joseph Lister (1827–1912) introduced sutures treated with carbolic acid to promote antisepsis, as well as pioneering the process of chromatization to prolong the tensile strength of the suture. In these times suture material was most commonly derived from violin strings, the instrument itself being referred to as the ‘kit’ (from the word ‘kitara’, what we now refer to as the guitar). The intestines of the sheep, goat or ox were used to make these strings, termed ‘kitgut’. Suture material subsequently became referred to as ‘catgut’ despite not using the intestines of the cat in their production.