Bisturí antiguo del visitante

The Bisturí antiguo del visitante is an antique surgical instrument given to Rosario Iturzaeta by an unidentified visitor. Its importance lies less in its age alone than in a forensic match: metal embedded in Lucía Aguirre’s bone has the same alloy and workmanship as the instrument. That match points to a handcrafted set of surgical tools, including a likely amputation saw, and gives the investigation a physical link between an old medical object and the cutting of Lucía’s arm. It does not, however, establish that the instrument itself was used to amputate her arm, or settle whether the same saw was used on Johana Márquez.

Identification and Examination

The instrument was sent from Estella Sanatorium for analysis. Doctor San Martín had already identified it as an antique; the subsequent examination placed it specifically in the seventeenth century. The dating depended on the alloys used at the time and on the way the metal had been melted and forged, features he regarded as giving the object a distinctive identity. The result thus rested on its material construction, not simply on its appearance or the story attached to it.

The crucial finding came when Doctor San Martín compared the instrument with a metal tooth embedded in Lucía Aguirre’s bone. The tooth and the instrument shared both alloy and forging technique. He concluded that they had been made at the same time, most likely as part of a single commissioned, entirely handcrafted group of medical tools for a surgeon. The match therefore did not mean that the tooth was a piece broken off the scalpel. It suggested a shared origin within a set of implements, a distinction that matters to the evidence.

The Amputation-Saw Hypothesis

Doctor San Martín proposed that the embedded tooth had belonged to an old amputation saw, a commonly used surgical tool. In the absence of antibiotics, he explained, amputation was a frequent response to serious infection. This account gives the fragment a plausible medical function and places the object within a working collection of surgical instruments rather than treating it as an isolated curiosity.

Amaia Salazar asked whether the saw might have been used to cut Lucía’s arm. Doctor San Martín considered that probable, since the tooth’s presence embedded in bone required an explanation, but he did not present the conclusion as proven. A mold would have to be made from the tooth and tested against a saw. He was nearly certain of his inference, yet the proposed comparison remained a necessary step between a compelling material match and a confirmed identification of the weapon.

Amaia then asked whether the same saw could have been used to amputate Johana Márquez’s arm. The question broadens the possible relevance of the tool set from one victim to another, but the available finding does not answer it. The shared alloy and forging connect the tooth and the antique instrument; they do not, by themselves, establish that one particular saw was used in either amputation. The object consequently functions as a strong investigative lead while preserving a gap between association and proof.

Provenance and the Family Mystery

The instrument enters the investigation through a visitor who gave it to Rosario Iturzaeta. Amaia later updates the judge on the analyses of the metal fragments found in Lucía’s body and the old instrument delivered to her mother. The visitor’s identity and reason for giving Rosario the object are not established in the available account. Its provenance therefore remains uncertain even as laboratory analysis makes its material history unusually specific.

The object’s significance develops alongside Amaia’s investigation into a different, hidden history in her family. The records show that Rosario had daughters named Flora, born in 1973, and Rosaura, born in 1975, followed in 1980 by a twin birth in which neither girl was named. A death certificate records a newborn daughter of Juan Salazar and Rosario Iturzaeta as having died of what was commonly called crib death. The family’s account is unsettled: relatives had not known about the child’s birth, and the coffin was closed when they attended the burial.

Amaia explains that the death is surrounded by contradictions about its cause, irregularities in the birth certificate, and human remains found in strange circumstances that may belong to her dead sister. These facts make the circumstances of the twin’s birth and death suspicious, but they do not establish that the antique instrument was involved. The medical records, family recollections, and forensic metal evidence remain distinct strands of inquiry. Their proximity in Amaia’s investigation intensifies the importance of the instrument without turning an unresolved connection into a fact.

Evidentiary and Narrative Role

The instrument changes the status of the metal tooth: what might otherwise appear as an unexplained fragment becomes traceable to a specific kind of historical medical toolmaking. At the same time, the result is carefully bounded. Dating the instrument, matching its alloy and forging to the tooth, and inferring a shared commissioned set are not equivalent to proving the identity of the saw or its use on either victim. Doctor San Martín’s proposed mold test marks the line between the evidence already obtained and the confirmation still needed.

That tension gives the object its investigative force. It is both concrete and incomplete: a seventeenth-century instrument with an identifiable metalworking history, linked to a tooth embedded in Lucía Aguirre’s bone, but not yet tied conclusively to a particular amputation. Its arrival through an unnamed visitor to Rosario adds an unresolved question of provenance, while the family’s concealed newborn death supplies a separate, disturbing context in which medical explanations and missing records are already under scrutiny. The object brings these inquiries into proximity, but the evidence stops short of explaining why the visitor gave it to Rosario or what, if anything, it has to do with the sister Amaia’s family had been led to believe never existed.