Posted on Reddit, but I thought I’d see if someone knew here, it’s a spring-loaded medical tool that shoots basically a small spear out the end of the tube and retracts it- you cock it by pulling the lever in back, then fire the “spear” by pushing the button under the tube. There’s two different tube lengths you can screw on. The seller thought it was for piercing ears, and it was sold in the same box with an old ear piercing instrument, but it looks kind of strange for that.
My grandfather was an ENT who passed away, maybe he would have known.
I’m putting in my guess for an antique lancet. The blade looks to short to do much of anything else other than let out little bit of blood and the way you said that it shoots out and then retracts sounds just like what the modern ones do.
Trepanning tool? Although I couldn’t find anything similar.
Paging Qadgop the Medical…
Kinda sorta looks like an old venereal disease treatment device. You can Google those to see similar stuff. I’m not going to tell you where they inserted it.
No clue. Though it looks far too straight to be used in most ENT procedures, particulary intubation or tracheotomy procedures. Also too big for slicing holes in ear drums.
Your description of how it works makes it sound like a very overly complicated lancet for poking fingers for obtaining a drop of blood.
Ear piercer is my best guess.
So, googling “antique ear piercer”, led me to this ebay auction which semi-confirms it.
I say ‘semi’ because the smaller instrument (not the one from the OP) shows up when I then google “vintage universal ear piercing tool”. That smaller instrument is the only one that is in a box, it’s also the only one that shows up in boxes in other locations on the internet (or at least one other place, could even be the same person). Eitherway, the box does say that it’s an ear piercer. Now, just because they’re shown in the same picture doesn’t mean they’re both the same thing, but it would imply it, at least to me. That’s the avenue I’d be pursuing for a while if I was really trying to figure it out.
A similar mechanism but very different appearance from WITT earlier this week:
Yup, guess where it came from (My sister has a vast collection of ear piercing equipment and is building a web page about the history same). With my traffic signals collecting guess bizarre hobbies run in the family…
The seller bought it at an estate sale so he didn’t know much about it. Sharing a box does imply that to me as it did to the seller, but I was just wondering if anyone could confirm it. The only paper is the card for reordering needles that clearly go to the smaller one that’s obviously an ear piercing instrument. These were small needles that were shaped like an ear piercing stud, not the blade type thing in the one in question.
That deserves a thread of its own. Very interesting.
I don’t see why an ear piercer should need that long tube. My guess is that it was used to open abscesses, most likely in the throat.
I open abscesses in the throat (and elsewhere), I would not want to use that instrument. Too straight, too long, and with a trigger to suddenly thrust a blade into tissue? A scalpel with a delicate touch would work much better than that thing.
That’s just MHO and I’ll certainly be open to input from an ENT or oral surgeon about their ideas.
Even today (most) ear piercers have long tubes. Between the springs, something to hold on to and a way to not have your hands right on top of the place you’re working, it’s just the way they’re made.
Any chance it’s a vet instrument?
From your text, I would have guess a needle biopsy gun. A more modern version looks like this.
http://www.bardbiopsy.com/products/index_cnb.php
We use it to biopsy solid organs like the breast, big muscles, liver.
The fact that it’s so long would suggest it’s designed for deep targets.
But the picture from reddit shows that tube to have a huge bore the size of a marker. That would leave a gaping hole that would bleed like stink.
Go fish…
There is such a thing as a spring-loaded needle gun used for a prostate biopsy. I learned this because I once had a biopsy ordered on my thyroid, but the doctor used an all-purpose biopsy check-box form and drew an X through “thyroid” so large that he effectively also checked “trans-rectal prostate” as well, and I was nervous about how the technician would resolve this ambiguity. Perhaps the tool shown was an early version of such a thing?