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!

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