Glass bottle with glass stopper contained in the wooden chest with brass handle on top and hinged doors. Empty.Printed label: Dover's Powder. Dover's powder was a traditional medicine against cold and fever developed by Thomas Dover (1660–1742), aka Doctor Quicksilver. It is no longer in use in modern medicine, but may have been in use at least through the 1960s. Its ' recipe in Encyclopaedia Britannica: Or a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Miscellaneous Litterature, Volume 14,Nummer 2, 1810, p. 417: “Sudorific, or Dover's powder. E.
Take of vitriolated tartar, three drams; opium, root of ipecacuanha powdered, of each one scruple. Mix, and grind them accurately together, so as to make an uniform powder." Savory 1836, p.29-30 says of its use: “This preparation is a valuable diaphoretic and sedative, as opium can be given in this form when it would be hazardous in any other. The diaphoretic influence of the ipecacuanha is augmented by the opium, whilst the soporific quality of that narcotic is greatly diminished by the ipecacuanha. The combined influence of both, exciting the cutaneous capillaries, produces a powerful and certain sudorific effect. It is given in rheumatism, gout, diabetes, dropsy, diarrhoea, and in inflammatory and other fevers..."