Sarah,

The middle artifact, the glass tube/rod with the bulbous end, looks like
the applicator from a mecurochrome  (sp?) or similar bottle, though it
appears to be longer than I remember. This chemical  was used as a topical
disinfectant when I was young (1950s) and for years before. I remember
finding old, half empty bottles of the stuff in my grandmother's medicine
cabinet which certainly dated back into the 1940s and maybe the 1930s.  The
bottle itself was usually brown glass and fairly small (2-3 oz).  It came
with a natural rubber stopper into which was inserted a clear glass
rod/tube (1- 1 1/2 inches long) as an applicator.  The applicator had a
bulb at the end, much like your middle example.  You would gather the stuff
on the applicator and then paint it on  wherever you'd scraped, punctured,
etc. yourself.  Because the stopper was rubber, it had a tendency over time
to seal itself to the bottle neck, as another poster has remarked.  When
that happened, you just got a new bottle of the stuff.  I imagine you were
also supposed to throw out the bottle that the stopper had sealed itself
to, but often these were just pushed to the back of the shelf.  Also, it
was possible to break the glass applicator if you applied too much pressure
or in the wrong dimension.  I have no idea of the  medical efficacy of the
chemical, however.

Perhaps you have a larger version of the glass applicator I've described.
 I'm sure there were other topical medications or other substances that
could have been applied using these types of applicators. I'd be interested
to hear what others have to say about it.

Tom

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Croucher, Sarah <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> While we are on the subject of glass tubes, I also have some that I'm
> curious about. There is a link to a photo of some of them below, but we
> have tons of these coming out of what seems to be a dump context. There are
> all kinds of materials mixed in, but we've also found a Whitall Tatum & Co
> flint glass prescription bottle (
> http://www.sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/WTandCo_BLockhart.pdf), dating from
> the 1870s through 1890s, and a liniment bottle dating to the same time
> period. This makes me think that these are likely related to medicinal
> production in some way, but I'd love some more information, if anyone has
> any.
>
> You can view a photo of some of our objects at:
>
> https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/labs/Middletown_Materials/Website%20files/Glass%20Tube%20photo.JPG
>
> Best,
> Sarah Croucher
>
> ***************************
>
> Sarah Croucher
>
> Assistant Professor
> Wesleyan University
> Anthropology Department
> 281 High Street
> Middletown, CT 06459
> USA
>
> Telephone: 860-685-4489
> http://scroucher.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
> http://beman-triangle.research.wesleyan.edu/
>



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