Enormous Bedpan Collection

Eric Eakin of Bay Village, Ohio has a huge collection of bedpans. Almost 200! He writes:

I have urine-specimen bottles from Canada; novelty bedpans used for advertising; bedpan ashtrays; bedpan-themed get-well cards; teeny-tiny bedpans used in doll houses (for infirm dolls in doll hospitals?); bedpans used as artwork ("The James Traficant Bedpan of Justice" by noted bedpan artist Dave Sparks and other painted in an American Indian motif); bedpans from Israel and Great Britain; even molds used to make ceramic bedpans.

I also have enema cans; an inflatable bedpan; a plastic urinal signed by the 13-year-old girls on my daughter's soccer team on the event of my birthday; even a urine-collection bottle used by crewmembers aboard B-52 bombers.

Upon reading the wonders of Mr. Eakin's collection, I am reminded of a passage from Plutarch's Life of Caesar:

In like manner we are told again that, in Spain, when he was at leisure and was reading from the history of Alexander, he was lost in thought for a long time, and then burst into tears. His friends were astonished, and asked the reason for his tears. "Do you not think," said he, "it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliant success?"

Link -via Weird Universe


Comments (8)

Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

Bought a glazed pot at a yard sale once because I thought it would look good to put a plant in. My mother-in-law dropped by and said "Why the hell do you have a piss-pot on your back deck?"
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It's definitely something you heat and then use to mark, old artifact use in the kitchen to torch creme brulee before the portable torch was invented!
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Antique witch finder. You hold it up to your eye, and you'll be able to spot the witch in the crowd.

Quite ingenious actually. Once the lens had fallen out (as with this example) it could still be used as a witch finder. You simply apply the finder firmly to the posterior (i.e. "smack them in the bum with the metal bit") until they say "I'm a Witch! I'm a Witch!"
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A passing token used upon single-line bidirectional-travel railway tracks. The hoop is picked up by the driver from a signal box (easy to collect on an arm) and handed over at another signal box at the end of the single-track section. This is probably from England's days of steam-driven locomotives.
EG.
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Used as a rug beater for years this artifact was adiscovered to have been stolen from the tomb of Kutchetechtun. The pharoah Tuts personal animal handler. Pictographs of found in the tomb disply that this was a tool used in the circumcism of Elephants.
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It's a Toddler Tug. Pass the loop through your child's arm and cinch it up at his armpit. No more leaning down to yank young Caleb by the elbow. Just grab his handle. Those Puritans sure knew how to raise kids.
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It is a bedding or a sheet warmer. It was kept in a container that would be placed in the fireplace. When it was warm it would be passed over the sheets and under the blankets to warm the sheets on cold nights.
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This is a safety magnifying glass. No glass, just dip in soapy water to trap a bubble lens across the aperture. Inspect your stamps or light your fire, shake off and put it away in your pocket.
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Used in ice cream shops, an instrument such as the one pictured is used to set a cone in whilst the server prepares the ice cream, grabs toppings, ect. Quite useful for those pointy-ended waffle cones, actually.
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I'm taking another guess. Could this be a tennis ball sizer? If the ball fits through the hole it's no good for Wimbledon. The wooden handle could also be used to prod to check firmness.
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