6 replies to this topic

[whitewind]

When my girl was highly pregnant we went a couple of times to the Nepean Hospital in Western Sydney for checkups, and in the foyer they had this glass cabinet with some interesting posters inside. The quality of the pics is a bit iffy, so apologies for some of these pics, but they're pretty interesting (at least I think so).

I would be interested for the recipes of these olde medicines if anyone has any please post (just for heritage reasons, of course)

 Pills and Potions of the past.jpg   621.65K   27 downloads

 Coca Tablets.jpg   759.84K   33 downloads

 Coca Wine.jpg   671.71K   38 downloads

 Cocaine toothache drops.jpg   699.71K   32 downloads

 Elixir.jpg   557.99K   30 downloads

 Mariani Wine.jpg   580.57K   22 downloads

[Darklight]

Ooh nice thread!

One of my favourite posessions is a 1923 British Pharmacopoeia (BP) pharmacist's handbook, which contains many useful things, such as instructions for analysing milk, your own ( or someone else's ) urine, dosing instructions for mercury against syphilis- and best of all, dose quantities for injecting your oxen with morphine. How handy is that?

Quality of your images is a bit low, I can make out Cocaine tooth drops, Vin Mariani, coca wine and Bayer's heroin, am I right? Bayer's would have been proprietary rather than a BP formulation, maybe Vin Mariani as well, though there is probably a recipe around for that

A mate who has the shopping gene picked it up for me out of a pile of random biographies of Ita Buttrose and Bob Hawke at a local book sale about fifteen years ago. I'll drag it out and have a look at it in a minute and see what I can come up with

[Darklight]

Trochiscus Krameriae et Cocaine- KRAMERIA AND COCAINE OR RHATAN AND COCAINE LOZENGE

(1) Extract of Krameria....... 0.060 | 1gr
(2) Cocaine Hydrochloride.. 0.003 | 1/20 gr
(3) Fruit Basis ........................ q.s | q.s

Mix (1), (2) and (3) to form a lozenge

________________________________

Krameria is usually Krameria argentea, an astringent. I'd have to look up fruit basis, but now you've started me I'll probably get stuck looking up weird stuff so I don't get my oxen morphine dose wrong

[whitewind]

Yeah the pics are awful we were in a bit of a rush and only had an old iphone at the time I'm very disappointed I couldn't have gone better but I still find it interesting, and a useful reminder of how things can change over time. The heroin and opium drops for children I found interesting, I had an old friend (now dead) who said he used to dose his kids up with opium drops from the pharmacist every time they had to do long journeys on the train, otherwise it would be nightmarish. I get the urge to do the same with my little daughter from time to time, specially when I'm tired enough to drop, but it's a bit frowned upon nowadays. I wonder if I can make a passionflower extract which might do the same? But I don't really like disrupting her system too much, she's a bit small and has enough to cope with as it is. There are some homeopathic remedies which work just fine anyway..

I'm interested in how to make the wine, are you saying Bob Hawke wrote about it in his biography? How random.! and I really want that paperweight it's awesome. I think this should be a thread of how to make recipes from yore, as an historical perspective.

[Darklight]

I have no idea who would prescribe this, nor what for. My initial belief was that it was heinous ;) then I googled it as a wart remover and as a possible treatment for cutaneous leishmaniasis, which I think has something to do with leprosy

Unguentum Cantharidini- CANTHARIDIN OINTMENT

(1) Cantaridin....... 0.033 | 1gr
(2) Chloroform.... 3.333 | 110m
(3) Benzoated Lard ..........96.666 | 6oz. 275gr

Dissolve (1) in (2), add to (3) previously melted, and stir until cold

Anyone want more recipes?

[Darklight]

The heroin and opium drops for children I found interesting, I had an old friend (now dead) who said he used to dose his kids up with opium drops from the pharmacist every time they had to do long journeys on the train, otherwise it would be nightmarish.

I have an old copy of advert clippings from the Bulletin circa late 1800's I think, no idea where it is, but one of the things you'd see quite commonly was nerve tonics containing opiates for grown up suffering from 'dissipation' etc. Further searching at the time revealed that it was common for people to change tonics as their tolerance developed, with stronger narcotic tonics being marketed and recommended for people trying to withdraw ( though that wasn't the term used ) from previous tonics.

I'm not sure how deliberate or conscious this process was for the consumer, nor how deliberate a ploy this was on the part of the manufacturers. But I did read somewhere once that if you have ancestors from Europe or the UK the chances were 1 in 5 that they had a narcotic dependency

The other cool thing in the clippings book was the amount of saucy adverts offering pamphlets about the salacious life of ballerinas. Apparently you couldn't get much more immoral than that at the time, at least not in family publications

I'm interested in how to make the wine, are you saying Bob Hawke wrote about it in his biography? How random.! and I really want that paperweight it's awesome. I think this should be a thread of how to make recipes from yore, as an historical perspective.

Na, the handbook was unearthed from this totally awful looking pile of mediocre biographies. I'd not even given the pile a closer look, but my mate has the shopping gene like I said and rescued it knowing I'd be interested. It's the 1925 edition on checking.

[nabraxas]

not really on topic but i love it anyway.
The best advert for amphetamines ever:


if it can make cleaning fun i'm in...