Mystery French Medical ? Item

Hi all, Have had this for some time but had no luck finding out what it is for.

it came from a French vide grenier last year and is very well made as can be seen. I thought it was for some sort anethstetic use as it has "CHLORETYLE BENGUE' alng with the usual Brevette SGDG marks.

However there is no venting hole or vavle to the top, it just comes straight off so all contents would be gone in a flash?

Any thoughts are most welcome.

Cheers, Martin

Ethyl chloride was and still is, used as a local anaesthetic e.g for piercing ear lobes and other bodily parts I prefer not to think about.
Quite possibly that's not the original top/valve (brass different colour?).
You can see a few 'antique' cylinders in Google Images>
**LINK**

Martin,

What an interesting device !

After drawing blanks on various translation tools, and on google

... I tried searching with DuckDuckGo, and would recommend that you do the same.

MichaelG.

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​https://duckduckgo.com

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/08/2018 11:23:39

Michael. many thanks indeed, lots of info there including an exactly similar photo. Seems there were several different sorts of this device, i liked the one with different ends/nozzles.

Cheers, Martin

Fowlers Fury: many thanks for the link, top does appear to be original as per one of Micheal's links.

Cheers, Martin

Michael, FWIW this came in the bottom of a box of grubby scrap spanners! Wrapped in an old copy of a French newspaper!

Martin

Martin,

I'm curious and don't want to explore on DuckDuckGo; I thought this was a drench tool or something similar.

What is it please?

Brian

As it boils at about 12.5C, perhaps it was partially filled with liquid which was allowed to evaporate and provide a mixture for general anaesthesia. A bit rough and ready by today's standards.

Neil

Hi Brian, It is a portable way of allowing local anaethstetic to be administered, i guess by dropping it on a mask over the patients nose & mouth. I do not think it could last very long as it evaporates so fast?

PS whats a drench tool?

Cheers, Martin

This would just be a storage tank.

I've only ever seen ethylene chloride used for it's evaporative cooling effect.. in dentistry on a pledgelet of cotton wool applied to teeth when unsure which is the sensitive one or sprayed topically prior to minor surgery.

This link to the anaesthesia journal describes it's general anaesthesia uses **LINK**

I'm guessing it would have been dripped onto a simple face mask. Indeed in my youth it was common for vets to anaesthatise cats for minor procedures using a pledglet of ether soaked cotton wool dropped into the bottom of either a golden syrup or fowlers treacle tin which had multiple piercings in it's base. The patient would inhale through that base and cotton wool and vapourise the ether. There is an art form in controlling mutiple feline weaponry with one hand while hanging on to the scruff and holding tin over face with the other.

After the procedure (typically a quick castration) the cat would be put back in it's basket and handed to the owner with instructions to drive home with the windows open a little - not enough for the cat to escape but enough to vent the cat's expirations lest the driver pass out.

pgk

"As it boils at about 12.5C, perhaps it was partially filled with liquid which was allowed to evaporate and provide a mixture for general anaesthesia."
It was in common use as a GA at the beginning of the 20thC but even then only administered as a spray onto a gauze mask. It is a potent anaesthetic but the induction is rapid and dose/response very steep so easy to administer a lethal dose. Like all volatile chlorinated liquids it was found to cause cardiac sensitivity. As a young apprentice pharmacist I remember local jewellers coming to replace their empty glass vials for LA ear-piercing.

Fowlers Fury - that is interesting and a little worrying. I use ether both for 'pepping up' stale fuel for model diesel engines and also in the form of easy start for petrol engines.

How much do you need to breathe in to cause a heart problem?

Cheers

John

That made me giggle

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Any special reason, Brian ?

... Your comment has made me curious

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/08/2018 14:17:45

John Paton wrote: "that is interesting and a little worrying. I use ether both for 'pepping up' stale fuel for model diesel engines and also in the form of easy start for petrol engines. How much do you need to breathe in to cause a heart problem?"
John,
Ether (Diethyl ether) is not a chlorinated compound so the cardiac sensitising effect of methyl chloride (chloromethane) & other chlorinated solvents isn't an issue for you. (Explosion risk is another matter !)

Pedantic P.S. for Neil, boiling point of chloromethane is: -24.2°C

I was once clever enough to flatten my thumb with a hammer blow, made a right mess of the thumb nail.

A medic at the local RN base treated my injuries. He had a small glass bottle of chloromethane which expelled a jet of the liquid as the liquid inside the bottle boiled off. The medic directed the jet ot liquid chloromethane at my damaged thumbnail. Intensely cold at first but I soon lost all sensation, moments later he removed the complete thumbnail. All over and done within a few minutes, I did not feel a thing.

He said I was lucky, in a previous era I would have been given a piece of wood to bight on instead.or perhaps a tot of rum.

Pedantic from me - we're talking about chloroethane not chloromethane...

Neil

Michael G

I picked up a computer bug from somewhere recently, despite the care taken with firewalls and the like and I was doubtful about the name DuckDuckGo----there was no other reason

Martin King 2

A drench is I believe a flushing device to which a piece of hose is attached and used as the name implies for irrigation purposes; it was the cross handle on top of your device that led me to thinking it might be a one shot pump action applicator.

Vets also apply a drench to cattle and other ruminants by pouring the mixture down a rubber tube with a filling funnel attached, the mixtures are mostly for re-hydration

Regards

Brian

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Thanks for the clarification, Brian

Due caution is always advisable, given the world we live in.

To the best of my knowledge DuckDuckGo is simply a very good search engine, built by people with very good intentions. ... I like it a lot.

If you are still comfortable using Wikipedia, may I suggest that you look at this: **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

MichaelG.

"Pedantic from me - we're talking about chloroethane not chloromethane..."

Mike., mea culpa and apology.

In mitigation, I was schooled in the old chemical nomenclature of methyl/methylene, ethyl/ethylene, propyl/propylene etc followed by the attached halogen radical. Before my retirement IUPAC decided to change it all by putting the radical first & calling them halogenoalkanes. So ethyl chloride became chloroethane and so on. Aged brains like mine had to cope with usage of both names, often leading to carelessness as in reading the b.p. of chloromethane instead of chloroethane. (Unless watched, spell checkers will “correct” one’s “errors” as typing this has proven).
It has become worse I fear, since once familiar names are now described as obsolete !
For example acetylene is now ethyne (not to be confused with ethene, previously known as ethylene) and acetone is now propanone.