The Emily Chesley Reading Circle

During the later years of his life, Flannigan developed a Hughsian obsession with nasal hygiene. Not content with the nose-nugget-removing capacity of the Personal Digital Assistant, circa 1897, Flannigan developed other more robust technologies, including The Nasalator, Flannigan’s Fingerless Rhinal Rectifier, and The Sinus Weasel (not to be confused with the FIannigan Phlegmenantrix.)

On New Year’s Day, 1901, Flannigan ushered in a new century with an invention he had been tinkering with for some time that combined all four previous nose-hygiene products, and which continues to be used to this day. (Though not as Flannigan had imagined it.) Based on the simple pumps he had worked on at the start of his career in the tin mines of Cornwall, the Pump-Action Nasal Cavity Irrigation System was a state-of-the-art nose-cleaning device.

Two hoses were held by the cleansee, positioning their ends in the nostril opening. The operator of the device (bow-tie not mandatory) waited until the cleansee was ready, at which point, the operator would shout, “prepare for the injection!” (giving the cleansee once last chance to remove the hoses). The operator then vigorously depressed and raised the MegaPlunger, providing the delightful pump-action necessary to help the cleansee eliminate potentially embarrassing nasal discharge.

Flannigan had learned from his past errors (see the Fully Invasive Earwax Remover and Mind Control Device), and the MegaPlunger did not drive the water with enough pressure to destroy the sinuses outright. However, there was enough force to fully engorge the cleansee’s nasal cavities with the sanitizing solution (a pleasing mixture of water, eucalyptus and carbolic acid), such that jets of liquid shot out of the cleansee’s:

a) ears
b) eyes
c) mouth, and in rare (fatal) occasions:
d) forehead.

Flannigan managed to create a prototype of this device before the disastrous (and tragic) test of his Nostril-Stretching and Nose-Hair Clipping Device later that month. Thought not successful as a nasal hygiene product, it has found some use, slightly adapted, in the modern era. Nowadays, it is known as “The PowerBong”.

–”Scholarship” by The Squire