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]
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Woah (re: gerbils).
I've always disagreed with dosing pets, too. Now I know why.
That is a horrible story. Glad you didn't become a serial killer, because who could blame you after that.
Dir Mr Ombredanne;
Does your inhaler come in gerbil size? I was directed to your bloggerweb via an intersearch request-net. I have recently come into possession of a large number of gerbils with between 8 and 13 limbs and I am looking for an efficient method of reducing this limb count to a more appropriate number (hopefully in the range of 3-5 limbs each.)
If your device would enable this, please let me know your ordering requirements. Do you provide bulk discounting?
Your Friend in Science,
Dr. Elmer Splashy Pants-Miller, Esquire
Sillyville, OR
The juxtaposition of chloroform, radio controlled dinosaurs, and microwaves make that a truly timeless tale. Or is it timeful? Timely? Cross-time? Inter-time? Ahh hell with it. It's remarkable.
So you're telling me that if I sneak in some chloroform soaked cotton wool balls into my housemates rat cages they'll eat their own limbs and possibly bleed to death? Then all I have to do is remove the cotton wool and therefore all the evidence and it will just look like they all went crazy because of some weird rat virus?
Awesome.
oh gosh. That is just.. awful. Are we a bit desensitized or something?
Reminds me of the guy who wanted to release the family's pet gerbil into the wild. In their local park. Their elderly, eight year old gerbil who had never been outdoors, and rarely outside of his cage even. And they come from Mongolia, anyhow. And all because "the new dog doesn't like the gerbil".
Am SO waiting for robotic animals for humans - at least we can make them so they don't suffer. I hope.
sigh