On Making a Medicine Chest

[Mission]

There was a thriving industry in home medicine kits in England during period. that definitely looks like a home kit. Bottles would most definitely have been corked like that.

[Mission]

Oho! A list of ingredients for a Privateering medicine chest from project Gutenburg! Slightly out of period [1742], but the ingredients all look familiar, so it's something. (Thanks to Captain Bo for bringing this link up.)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24882/24882-h/24882-h.htm#DOC_158

I come up with 117 ingredients, although it was just a quick count. That again suggests a much bigger box than many shown in this topic. The destination would guide the list of ingredients which the surgeons felt they needed.

Note that I removed a bunch of the instruments to come up with an ingredient count, although the instruments are interesting in a way as well. To wit:

a Pewter Glyst. Syringe [boy, the loved their Clysters...being Pewter, they were soft and thus probably easily damaged...particularly the threads.]

...

Sponge 2 oz.

...

6 Square Bottles [Note that he specifies the shape.]

4 qt. Bott. [Note that he DOESN'T specify the shape.]

4 Blue and white pots

Tow [Linen - makes good sense.]

Vials and pots, 1 Doz.

6 Doz. Corks large and small [We were just talking about corking bottles. Here's more proof.]

a Box

a Broken Red and Do. White Skin [Not sure?]

a Mortar and Pestle

an Iron Laddie [Probably 'ladle']

a Stone Coffee Pot [a interesting one for you non-surgeons, perhaps]

[PoD]

This page has a few items that may well look good in a medicine chest. I particularly like the early 18th century bullet extractor and the personal dental kit.

http://www.etesseract.com/Medical/Medical.html

[Mission]

That's neat - I didn't know Garangeot started with a three pronged version of his bullet extractor. I would think it would be devilishly difficult to use, though, what with the bullet being covered with blood and fluids and so forth. In fact, I'd imagine that's why he changed it to a screw instead as the article there suggests. (You can see a repro copy of the screw version which is available for a much more reasonable price over at Godwin's site here.)

What I really like on that page is the early personal dental kit:

I haven't seen much reference to them (especially from the 17th c. as the page suggests.) It's curious that the tools have no handles - they're just raw steel. That is not at all like most medical instruments from period which had wood, bone, ivory or other material handles. Of course, they are doubled ended, so that might be why, although it still raises a potential flag in my mind as to their dating.

In any case, a personal dental kit probably wouldn't have been in the kit of a common sailor. These would more likely be used by the gentlefolk from what I've read. Then again, if it is period, since they are raw steel this might suggest they were oriented to the common man. The bone case could hint that they would be used for traveling - or at least be carried about for some reason. Like I said, I really like it.

[PoD]

when I was looking at the picture I assumed they were a lot bigger than they actually are. They are only the length of a tooth pic. I was considering making some but I dont think I can work that small.

[Mission]

Try a blacksmith. There's usually one or two at the period trade fairs which seem to go on in the winter.

Actually, I didn't look at the size - they're smaller than I thought, too. (Bigger than a toothpick, but not by much.)

[PoD]

Try a blacksmith. There's usually one or two at the period trade fairs which seem to go on in the winter.

Actually, I didn't look at the size - they're smaller than I thought, too. (Bigger than a toothpick, but not by much.)

Actually I was just thinking I bet you could make a set out of some wood nails with a dremel and a blow torch. I shall investigate it when I go to my dads workshop.

[Mission]

So, according to Moyle, who is right in the middle of period, unlike any previous author I have cited, we have four instrument and drug transports. The Surgeon's chest, the Drug Chest, the Plaster Box and the Pocket Kit.

I found some further confirmation of this.

“In 1629 King Charles I ordered “all the English ships calling at English ports to have a surgeon on board. The king ordered the Barber-Surgeons’ Company to get 97 trained Surgeons to fill the ships which had not surgeons, for when the law came into force”. A trained Surgeon is a Surgeon plus kit. The Company could not get the numbers. The Apothecaries made up the numbers kitted out all 97 of the Surgeons and Apothecaries with 3 chests: a small wounds chest (first aid or plaster box); a large Surgeon’s chest and an Apothecary chest. The Surgeons were given a crash course in apothecary work, and the Apothecaries one in surgery. The cost of the chests alone would have been very high. Once on board the ship, if the first aid chest was not adequate, the Surgeon/Apothecary would go for the chest he had more knowledge of." (Rory W. McCreadie, The Barber Surgeon's Mate of the 16th and 17th Century, p. 23)

I wonder what McCready's source is?

[PoD]

I finally found the picture from "A Prooved Practice" again. Thought i'd post it as the links to the original picture disappeared.

Theres a nice page in his book too of a man who looks like he's fallen into the weapons storage chest

[Mission]

I finally found the picture from "A Prooved Practice" again. Thought i'd post it as the links to the original picture disappeared.

Thanks! I hadn't noticed it was no longer appearing in the first post. Maybe I should fix that...

Theres a nice page in his book too of a man who looks like he's fallen into the weapons storage chest

I can't immediately bring to mind whose surgical manual that appears in, but it's actually a sort of diagram to show the different kinds of wounds a person can receive and which the surgeon may have to deal with. (It seemed a bit useless to me as a teaching aid when I first saw it, but it IS quite dramatic looking.)

[PoD]

These Broadsides from c.1688 - 1710 have pictures of a rectangular medicine chest in it

http://www.britishmu...asset_id=333782

http://www.britishmu...asset_id=333656

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_image.aspx?objectId=3068536&partId=1&searchText=quack&fromDate=1650&fromADBC=ad&toDate=1730&toADBC=ad&orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx&numPages=10&currentPage=3&asset_id=353218

Edited October 3, 2010 by PoD

[Mission]

Wow! Nice find, PoD! I love the detail of the top of the chest. These are much more like what I would expect a sea chest to be like than some of the other examples I have cited with the center opening doors. I notice the bottles appear to be square-bottomed as well. Very nice find!

Interesting too that they have curved tops. What do you make of that, Ed?

[PoD]

Wow! Nice find, PoD! I love the detail of the top of the chest. These are much more like what I would expect a sea chest to be like than some of the other examples I have cited with the center opening doors. I notice the bottles appear to be square-bottomed as well. Very nice find!

Interesting too that they have curved tops. What do you make of that, Ed?

I was looking at the size of the bottles and I got to wondering if they might actually be double layered boxes (much like how modern tool boxes have the tray bit that lifts out to get to space below). From the top one it looks like there is 6 rows of 5 sections for the bottles making 30 bottles. If it was double layered that would increase to 60 bottles.

Interestingly the little case on the floor next to it reminds me a lot of this one on an ebay auction:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Late-17th-Century-English-Shagreen-Instrument-Case-/310256693955?pt=UK_Antiques_Science_RL&hash=item483cbd72c3

[Mission]

It probably had drawers in the bottom part. If you re-read some of the older posts, you'll see that this was typical of medicine chests.

[PoD]

ok course. i forgot about that. It's a pity the top one isnt clearer as you can just make out the front but not in any detail

[PoD]

Here is another picture showing a clearer image of the chest.

From this picture it looks like the chest has 3 rows of 6 spaces which are the same size then a row nearest the front of the chest that is thinner than the rest. I wonder if this was how they were or if the artist just didnt space out the dividers properly in the drawing. I like the fact it shows the bottles as having spherical stoppers in them too

[PoD]

the small box may well be like the one I mentioned above as I have just found another one here:

Obviously i doubt that the general medical population had one this ornate though although the basic design may have been the same. The little drawer underneath would account for where the spatulas go seen in the broadsheet pictures

http://www.antiquesc...rticles%203.htm

ooooooooh look what I just found too:

Surgical instrument case and instruments, English, 1650-1700.

The case is made of silver mounted shagreen (fish skin), bearing the arms of the Barber Surgeons' Company. The instruments consist of scisors, a tongue depresor, forceps, probes, and lancets. The double-edged blades of the lancets are placed between tortoise-shell covers with inverted screws, they were used for opening veins for blood letting. The various sizes and shapes of lancet were used on veins of different sizes or locations.

.....oops got a bit excited there.

Edited October 6, 2010 by PoD

[Mission]

Nice detail on the scissors and forceps. I would love to get some more period-style scissors and forceps in my set - a good kit would have had a wide variety of them. ("Oh mighty eBay...give me cool antique scissors and forceps to bid upon.")

Those you have shown are probably all pocket kits. Somewhere previously in this thread I explained that the average sea surgeon would have had (at least) four medical containers: the large medicine chest, the plaster box, an instrument box and a pocket kit. There are also some references to barbering kits in some manuscripts.

I think it is Yonge who refers to a pocket kit or some other one of his smaller boxes being wrapped in crocodile or snake skin. He received it by mistake after his ship was taken at sea and his medical items were being returned to him by his captors. So it's not out of the question that a sea surgeon might have had some nicer boxes...although generally I would think it would be less rather than more likely. Many sea surgeons seem to have gone to sea because they didn't have the money or social connections to get a more lucrative land-based position.

[PoD]

Nice detail on the scissors and forceps. I would love to get some more period-style scissors and forceps in my set - a good kit would have had a wide variety of them. ("Oh mighty eBay...give me cool antique scissors and forceps to bid upon.")

Those you have shown are probably all pocket kits. Somewhere previously in this thread I explained that the average sea surgeon would have had (at least) four medical containers: the large medicine chest, the plaster box, an instrument box and a pocket kit. There are also some references to barbering kits in some manuscripts.

I think it is Yonge who refers to a pocket kit or some other one of his smaller boxes being wrapped in crocodile or snake skin. He received it by mistake after his ship was taken at sea and his medical items were being returned to him by his captors. So it's not out of the question that a sea surgeon might have had some nicer boxes...although generally I would think it would be less rather than more likely. Many sea surgeons seem to have gone to sea because they didn't have the money or social connections to get a more lucrative land-based position.

Yep I love the instruments. I like the box thats on ebay at the moment but I cant afford to pay out that much for it.

[PoD]

Do you have any physical descriptions for the plaster box rather than its contents?

[Mission]

I doubt that instrument case will sell. He wants too much for it.

[Mission]

Do you have any physical descriptions for the plaster box rather than its contents?

No, I have no idea what it looked like - everything I've found I've re-printed here. I'm going to guess that it had at least one tray in it like some of the instrument boxes I've seen from time to time.

[PoD]

I found this on the British History Online site:

Plaster box

[playster boxe; playster box; playstar box; plaister box]

Not, as might be thought, simply a BOX containing PLASTER or plasters, but a complete kit for a surgeon. Randle Holme's illustration is not overly helpful, but his description compensates by its fullness. The surgeon's plaster box, he wrote, consisted of three parts; first of all the box itself, 'in which lyeth such Instruments as serve for present use, which are small ones only'. These included Spatulas, FLEAM, Directorie, Probe, Stitching NEEDLE and QUILL, LANCET, BORAX (or Burras) PIPE, Levitor and Uvula SPOON. The second component was the lid with a pouch in which to keep LINT, and the third the 'Drawer, at the bottom of the Box, in which are kept all the Plasters ready made, and are for any sudden occasion'. These 'Emplasters which this lower Box or Drawer doth contain, are at the least three or more several kinds, as Emplastrum Stipticum Paracelsi' (presumably EMPLASTRUM PARACELSI), Emplastrum Diachalcichos (presumably DIACALCITHEOS), Emplastrum de Lapide Calaminari, and EMPLASTRUM E MINIO (Emplastrum de Minio) [Holme (2000)]. Entries like '1 plaisterbox w'th som smal Instrum's therein' [inventories (1685)] fit Holme's description well. Some surgeons did have more complex equipment, for example, in the will of one, he left 'to my said Brother Richard Mayott my Plaster Box with the Instruments therein And my Salvatory and my Case of Lancetts with the Instruments therein' [inventories (1686)]. The term seems to have died out, and has not been noted after 1701 [inventories (1701)].

I am just trying to find this illustration that was by Randle Holme in his book The Academy of Armory written in 1701 but I am not having much joy. Reading that description though it almost sounds as if the small box in the post above is the actual plaster box rather than the pocket kit like we originally thought. If thats the case then I am wondering what the emplasters actually look like as I'd imagined them to be large bulky bandages. If this box is a plaster box then they mustn't be must larger than a modern day band aid

[Mission]

Excellent find! Thank you ever so much for digging that up! In fact, in design, it sounds very much like the instruments box (which is not the same as that little thing they're calling an instrument box - the ones I'm thinking of held the bone saws, so they would be 2 or 3 feet long and nearly a foot wide.)

I had downloaded the Holme book from the university library, but now I find that I only got the first page. (This has happened to me a couple of times; I need to watch that fool download mechanism on their computers more closely in the future...) I perused the Armory very quickly when I found it on the Uni-computer, and it's seemed to me like an almost random scattering of sketches and descriptions of all manner and sort of things. This book reads like stereo instructions.

I believe Hurricane has it on CD although I doubt he's reading this thread. If you're really interested, you might shoot him a pm and see if he can dig it up for you.

In regard to the box you found on eBay, I would say it's too small to be a plaster box based on my understanding of what it would have contained. The plasters for large wounds of the extremities could be quite large - I seem to recall dimensions of 3 and 4 inches wide that would probably be at least that long if not more. You could hardly fit more than a few band-aids in the drawer of that is about 1/4 - 1/3 the height of a box that is 6.5" x 2.3" x 2" tall. Although I could well be wrong...

[PoD]

yeah i might just do that. I can only find an illustrated audio book of it, however they manage to do that I dont know.

Seems emplasters were basically a paste on silk or similar materials so they would get a few in that little drawer i imagine