Although Tom may be right in surmising the bulbous ended item as a 
Mercurochrome (or other topical liquid) applicator, it appears a tad 
long for the ones I remember, as well as appearing to be a hollow tube 
with a closed end, instead of being a solid rod (as I remember the 
Mercurochrome applicators being). Besides, the active ingredient of 
Mercurochrome (Merbromine) wasn't discovered as an antiseptic until 
after WWI, and the Mercurochrome wasn't available commercially until 
some time afterward. All of which is saying that while yours' is not an 
applicator for Mercurochrome (which we kids referred to as "monkey 
blood"), doesn't mean that it couldn't have been an applicator for some 
other solution.

All things considered, together, your items certainly do have a 
"medical" or "apothecary" feel to them. The large cylinder appears to be 
an early type of syringe, and none of the other items would have been 
out-of-place in a physician's bag, drugstore, or apothecary shop (lab) 
of the 1870s. These are also the types of glassware items I have seen in 
collections from places (I hesitate to use the word "lab" even though 
actually appropriate, since it is likely to convey a highly erroneous 
modern image) where various plant extracts (viz: ingredients for the 
ubiquitous patent medicines of the age, "essential" oils, perfumes, 
etc.) were produced.

Are any of your pharmaceutical bottles embossed with a label? Have you 
done the background archival work on the property that might point-to or 
suggest its use for this purpose? Were any purveyors of snake-oil based 
with the address of the township your site is located within?

Regards,
Bob Skiles


On 2/5/2013 7:16 AM, W. Thomas Langhorne, Jr. wrote:
> 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/
>>
>
>