It looks like a door standing alone on a beach. You can see the ocean behind it and the clouds in the sky. Reminds me of the doors in the Gunslinger series by Stephen King.

Very reminiscent of "Session 9"....

If that fume hood is the only hood in the room, I would guess that this was exclusively a chemistry lab. Fume hoods offer no protection from contamination for the lab worker or the biological specimen.

Wow! At the far left on the lab counter is a vortexer. I have the exact same model in one of our less restrictive labs.

I love it when Motts posts something with which I can relate. I'm a molecular biologist, and I study how viruses interact with receptors on the cell surface. I frequently use chlorpromazine in my cell culture experiments because the drug completely impairs one of the uptake pathways that the viruses normally exploit. Being a neuroleptic drug, everyone in the lab that handles it must observe strict safety protocols.

No, definitely not used for Cheerios. In my lab, we use one in the tissue culture hood to provide suction for an aspirator flask. Most modern laboratories have "in house" suction available, so it's not surprising that one of these portable vacuum pumps would be found in an older abandoned medical/laboratory facility.

Motts,
This looks like a portable vacuum pump. We have several like this at the laboratory where I work. They're often used in the older wings of our building that weren't equipped with "in house" vacuum ports.