Ombredanne Inhaler: Nothing Says ‘I Love You’ Like Ether
My friend Kat came back from Buenos Aires with this vintage “Ombredanne Inhaler,” used around the turn of the century to administer ether or chloroform as surgical anesthesia. From Phisick.com:
Professor Louis Ombredanne (1871-1956), the inventor of the apparatus, was a French Surgeon who introduced his ether breathing apparatus in 1908 and it was subsequently widely used throughout Europe. They were made by various makers in the early 1900s.
You used to be able to buy chloroform off the shelf at my hometown pharmacy. My step-father once got the bright idea to toss a couple of chloroform-soaked cotton balls into my gerbil cage. “It’ll knock them right out!” (This is the same man who thought it would be a good idea to microwave my R/C dinosaur a few years before. “It’ll totally freak out!” And it did—if you count twitching then catching on fire freaking out.)
He daubed some chloroform from the brown glass bottle onto the cotton and tossed it down into the wood chips. The gerbils made no move for a moment, then began to gnaw off their own limbs.
Don’t give your pets drugs, kids!
The best drug geek gift I’ve ever purchased [Dosenation.com]
posted in: Health , Retro
Source: Ombredanne Inhaler: Nothing Says ‘I Love You’ Like Ether
