One of the pictures in a Walter Reed Army Medical Center collection of historic photographs is a simple, black-background shot of what we can only assume is some sort of scientific equipment:
The question is, what is it? According to the caption, it's a 1984 picture of a "mouse-tail wash table". My guess is that it was used to wash the tails of mice used in scientific experiments, presumably after said tails had been removed from their original owners. Exactly which lab used the device, and for what sort of research, is not so clear.
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I suppose this is one of those cases where it's not just a clever name, like rat-tail file.
Given that it's old military in origin, I daresay the experiments could have involved anything, but was likely a variant of "how ridiculous a project can we come up with" or "just what _can_ we make a lab tech do".
Mouse-tails are often used as a source of genomic DNA for research applications, and the extraction process apparently once used to be a rather complicated, multiple-step affair.
I'd guess that device would figure in there somewhere...
We had a similar device made out of clear plastic in our lab that would allow the mouse to run in and still have its tail sticking out the back. You quickly shut a trap door so the tail is locked in place making it easier to snip off the end and draw blood from the tail vein. We were taking samples to screen for antibodies during monoclonal production. It was a huge failure as most of the time the mouse was able to pull its tail back inside the chamber before you could get the sample. Ultimately we resorted to retro-orbital veinipuncture to draw blood. I wont describe it, very sad for the mouse.