What I believe to be an extremely Rare, unique and unusual Prisoner of War carved bone Practitioners spoon to administer Laudanum to Napoleonic troops. Carved from Bovine with a small Brass corkscrew. The corkscrew too small for a wine bottle cork with no leverage other than the Skull head. It would however be ideal for the cork in a medicine or tincture bottle. The spoon around a 5ml measure on todays medicine spoons. Laudanum was a 10% measure of Opium in Alcohol and was widely used to treat victims of war on the battlefield with soldiers often dying from overdose or becoming addicted.
Before the invention of the hypodermic needle, a hydro-alcoholic solution or tincture of opium, known as laudanum, was used for oral administration. Another tincture of opium with camphor added was paregoric, which was used for the treatment of diarrhoea; morphine, mixed with kaolin, can still be used for this purpose.
The spoon is the perfect size to fit in an Adult hand and the bowl and corkscrew suit the purpose…….Circa 1805-15
What I believe to be an extremely Rare, unique and unusual Prisoner of War carved bone Practitioners spoon to administer Laudanum to Napoleonic troops. Carved from Bovine with a small Brass corkscrew. The corkscrew too small for a wine bottle cork with no leverage other than the Skull head. It would however be ideal for the cork in a medicine or tincture bottle. The spoon around a 5ml measure on todays medicine spoons. Laudanum was a 10% measure of Opium in Alcohol and was widely used to treat victims of war on the battlefield with soldiers often dying from overdose or becoming addicted.
Before the invention of the hypodermic needle, a hydro-alcoholic solution or tincture of opium, known as laudanum, was used for oral administration. Another tincture of opium with camphor added was paregoric, which was used for the treatment of diarrhoea; morphine, mixed with kaolin, can still be used for this purpose.
The spoon is the perfect size to fit in an Adult hand and the bowl and corkscrew suit the purpose…….Circa 1805-15
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