Glass bottle with glass stopper and leather cap tied with string, contained in the wooden chest with brass handle on top and hinged doors. Contains a white powder. Printed label: Calomel. Calomel, a mercurial prepararation, was widely used in the nineteenth century. Savory writes about it in his 1836 'Companion to the medicine chest' p. 17-18:
“Calomel. – This mercurial preparation is more extensively and more usefully employed than almost any other article of the Materia Medica. But its principal use is as a purge, conjoined with other aperients; and for this purpose it is administered in doses of from three to six grains, combined with, or followed by, cathartic extract, rhubarb, senna, or other laxatives. (…) In affections of the liver, in various glandular diseases, and in some cutaneous eruptions, calomel is celebrated as an alternative; and, combined with diuretics, it singularly contributes to their activity. (…)..,and in croup no remedy proves so decidedly useful as calomel, in these combinations, administered after bleeding and purging.(…)” Turnbull, 'The Naval Surgeon', 1806: John Clark, Observations on the diseases in long voyages to hot countries, and particularly on those which prevail in the East Indies,1773 was first to use calomel in dysentery.