A stick or tool used to remove botfly larvae from animals; a medical implement for treating bot infestations.
From 'botts' (parasitic larvae) plus 'stick' (Old English sticca), describing a practical tool farmers and veterinarians used to extract parasites from livestock.
Before modern veterinary medicine, removing bot larvae was a gruesome but necessary farm task—the bottstick had to be used carefully to extract the larvae whole, or breaking it inside the wound could cause dangerous infections.
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