If you wanted to get blotto and you knew your onions, it was duck soup to go to a croaker and dip the bill without resorting to a blind tiger. … More Prescription for Getting Owled: Prohibition and the Medical Establishment
The Story An early form of ‘doctor’s bag’, a wooden medicine chest was designed to hold instruments and drug supplies. Some were finely crafted from imported woods and brass and had fitted drug bottles. Wealthier families also kept their own medicine chests for home use. Such appears to be the case with this particular chest. … More Medicine Chest (From the Collection #10)
The Story Before mass-production began in the nineteenth centuries and even into the beginning of the twentieth century, pharmacists created medicines in-house. For centuries they rolled pills by hand. This labour-intensive process began with a doctor’s prescription that indicated the weight of every ingredient needed to produce one pill as well as the number of … More Pill Machine (From the Collection #12)
The Story Medicinal pills were first coated with sugars and honeys in the 9th century, to mask repulsive odours and tastes. In the 17th century, pharmacists began coating pills in gold and silver leaf to appeal to the most affluent members of society who regarded this luxury as a symbol of status. This primarily aesthetic … More Pill Silverer (From the Collection #13)
The primary ingredients of the syrup were morphine and alcohol, with approximately 65 mg of morphine per fluid ounce. A teaspoonful of the syrup, then, had the morphine content equal to that of approximately twenty drops of laudanum. … More Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup: The Baby Killer
