old farming kit

RE: old farming kit

Evelyn Barbour-Hill — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 16:17:38 GMT

[quote user="patrick murphy"]

if you would do it please, as I am computer illiterate and had to get my wife to actually put the pictures up at all.thanks. it is interesting.

[/quote]

OK, I will do that very thing.

RE: old farming kit

patrick murphy — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:15:42 GMT

if you would do it please, as I am computer illiterate and had to get my wife to actually put the pictures up at all.thanks. it is interesting.

RE: old farming kit

Hannah Wynne Richards — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 09:25:43 GMT

Could the spatula be used for tongue depression?

Wynne

RE: old farming kit

Anthony Dennison — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:59:32 GMT

[quote user="Rachel Brown "]Are the bunch of three steel 'tubes' cow teat instruments? Used to remove 'milkstones'. Maybe some of others are for opening/dilating teats[/quote]

Or a route to inflate the udder with ye olde treatment of milk fever?

RE: old farming kit

Catriona MacIntyre — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:52:22 GMT

[quote user="Rachel Brown "]Does the steel tube contain a very large bore needle- a bleeding needle. I have something similar used for collecting blood from jugular in cows for transfusions.[/quote]

Sounds a possibilty. Phlebotomy was a common treatment for laminitis in horses. I wondered it the second knife down is a type of fleam.

RE: old farming kit

Rachel Brown — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:32:03 GMT

Does the steel tube contain a very large bore needle- a bleeding needle. I have something similar used for collecting blood from jugular in cows for transfusions.

Are the bunch of three steel 'tubes' cow teat instruments? Used to remove 'milkstones'. Maybe some of others are for opening/dilating teats

The knives look like ones used for paring horses/cow's hooves.

my tuppence!

Rachel

RE: old farming kit

Evelyn Barbour-Hill — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 16:19:42 GMT

Very interesting.

This really looks like a veterinary surgeon's kit rather than a farmer's.

Of the tortoiseshell handled knives: the one like a hockey stick would be usually be termed a castrating knife – doesn't mean it would actually be used for castration. The others look like operating knives or "bistouries': note that one has a blunt probe end. Could be used for e.g. neurectomy?

The tubular thing looks like a container for something: does the top unscrew?

The perforated thing on the right is a urethral or maybe vaginal "sound" or drain, or possibly for thoracic use; or conceivably for wound irrigation although in that case I don't know why it would be curved. The other long things appear to be various probes and sounds, probably all intended for urethral use I guess. Or do the thinner ones have eyes (it's not quite clear in the photo)? In which case they are of course needles or seton needles.

I have no idea what the spatula-like thing is for. I wonder if the holes in it mean it was designed to attach to something else?

As for the bone-handled thing with a brass (?) prodder on the end (and does it have a folding blade as well?) again I have no idea.... I've not seen anything like that before.

If you were to send the pictures (or I could do it for you) to both the following editors, I know both would be interested, probably publish the pictures and invite members' comments.

Bulletin of the Historical Medical Equipment Society:

drtgcsmith@aol.com

Veterinary History (journal of the VHS):

johnclewlow@aol.com