Browse Items (111 total)

Hygieia was often associated with the continuation of good health, whereas her father, Aesculapius, was seen as the god of medicine and healing. This detailed section measures approximately one inch across.

This jar is decorated with poppy flowers. The flower depicted here is more likely the Flanders or corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) and not the true poppy (Papaver somniferum) used for opium production.

Basilicum was used as both an ointment and as powder in dressing, digesting, cleansing, and incarning wounds and ulcers.

In 1914, the Harrison Act restricted the distribution of opium derivatives to use for medicinal purposes, in order to minimize the spread of drug addiction. In form and classification it was a revenue measure.

This was an emplastrum or medicinal plaster with hemlock as the active ingredient. The Greek philosopher Socrates was executed by drinking a cup of poison hemlock, but that was most likely not the northern water hemlock (cicuta virosa) or spotted…

S was an abbreviation for syrupus (syrup). The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides mentions oats as a remedy for coughs in his herbal.

Sugar was used in pharmacies principally to cover bad tastes, to give form, and to preserve more active substances. Many tablets today are coated after being pressed. Although modern tablet coatings use other ingredients, sugar coating has a long…

Species of poisonous vegetable resembling the parsnip and native to Great Britain. Its effects are similar to those of opium, relieving pain, allaying irritability, and producing sleep. However, it has the advantage of not constipating the bowels, as…

This was deemed useful in the treatment of urinary disorders, especially dysuria, or difficulty in voiding urine. Nitre, or nitrate, was suspected of irritating the neck of the bladder, thus promoting the secretion of urine. It was also used to…

An extract of the dandelion called taraxacum, which is slightly tonic, diuretic, and aperient, was thought to have a specific action upon the liver. It was mentioned in Nicolas Culpeper's 'The Complete Herbal' (1653) that it was in more general use…