Wednesday 26 March 2014

Place on tongue and swallow with a draught of water


My latest ephemera find.
Three volumes of a pharmacists prescription books.
Dating from the 1930’s.




Each volume a thick heavy doorstop of a book …



… listing all the remedies individually prepared for ones complaints.


When drugs and remedies were stored in wooden drawers …
… or glass bottles with glass stoppers …


… with the name of the contents inscribed on decorative labels.


When medicines were ground together in pestle and mortars
And dispensed in little glass bottles with cork toppers …


… or pretty cardboard boxes.
When tablets were made …
… by weighing out powders on tiny brass scales …
… and rolling into little beads …
… on brass pill tiles.


Visiting the doctor was a very expensive business.
A chemist provided a wealth of different remedies …
… affordable for most people …
… and cheaper than a visit from the doctor.


With shelves filled with ingredients …
… to make all kinds of tonics and preparations ...
… claiming to cure all sorts of illnesses.


Here, the prescriptions are listed in a book.
Written in abbreviated medical Latin.


Dispensed, signed and dated by the pharmacist …


… with directions on how to administer the treatment …


… eloquently and thoughtfully conveyed.



Some charming entries …

Mrs Stebens instructed to take ‘’two or three to be instilled into the nostril frequently’’

Mr Quick ‘’to be dissolved in a tumbler of warm water and syringed through each nostril’’

Perhaps more disquieting is the entry for a Mr Welsh who was prescribed ‘’boracic, one teaspoonful in pint of warm water to sniff up the nose and spit out through the mouth’’ 


Yuk!

***




Thursday 20 March 2014

Settling Down

Settling down to Cornish living ...

(Cottages nestle round the harbours)

… there are discernible differences …
… from ‘up North’.
Apart from the obvious …

(A sign made for me?)

… the sea …
… the light …



O, the amazing light!


The language …
… takes a little getting used to …
(on both sides apparently)
… charming expressions …
… with a beautiful curly accent.

***

The days are longer and  lighter.
The flowers bloom earlier.


The floras exotic, 


spiky ... 


...and ferny.
Trees and hedges look one sided ...
... as they are shaped by the winds ...


... and smothered in moss as long as a old sailors beard.

The driving.
Even the shortest journeys take longer…
… due to reversing up the narrow lanes …


… for a passing place for other cars to pass.
The deep granite walls that line these lanes …
… are unforgiving.
As many cars do testify.


Here seems a gentler, more relaxed, pace of life.
People get to it ‘dreckly’
… and take more time to say ‘hello’.
And of course, a beach walk and the sea …



…  is only a hop, skip or jump away.

***