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!
Yuk!
***
