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Kerm Minera: (Kermes Mineralis). Antimony, found in a particular ore, when boiled and cooled forms a powder, which is often mixed with numerous other important agents. This was used for fevers, rheumatic and cancerous cases and to hasten the action of other medications when used as an auxiliary.
Ung: Tuthia (Tutty Ointment). U or Ung is an abbreviation of unguentum (ointment). Tutty was crude zinc oxide; tutty eye ointment was made from zinc oxide and other ingredients. Zinc oxide has been used as an ingredient in medicinal ointment for centuries.
Spermaceti. Spermaceti was a cooling ointment used to treat excoriations of the skin. It was also often used to soften and heal chapped skin. Spermaceti was gathered during whaling and was quite valuable. Thomas Jefferson discussed the economic import of spermaceti for the colonies in an 1775 address to Congress.
Orvietan. Orvietan or Venice treacle, once believed to be a sovereign remedy against poison. From Orvieto, a city of Italy, where it is said to have been first used.
Nitre: Pulveris (Nitrate Powders). 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 modify febrile excitement, lessening the heat of the body. Most frequently, nitre was pulverized so as to be mixed with other agents and ingested.
Polvo Paulinia. Extracted from the Brazilian tree, Guarana, the drug stored in this jar was believed by the Indians to be useful in the prevention and cure of bowel complaints. It was taken by the Indians after being mixed with food or drinks.
S: Hyosc: Nigr (Hyosciamus Niger). 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 opium does. Henbane, when administered skillfully, is a valuable sedative.
Ext: de Noix V: (Noix vomique). Noix vomique, Nux vomica, and is also known as the strychine tree (Strychnos nux-vomica). Extracted from a tree covered with a smooth, dark gray bark, the drug that was stored in this jar was believed by some physicians to act favorably upon the stomach because it was slowly absorbed and acted locally somewhat persistently.
Cold-Cream (Rose Cold Cream). Cold cream, the white, soft, and elegant unguent, derived its odor from rose water. It was used as a pleasant cooling application to heal irritated and excoriated surfaces, particularly chapped lips and hands. From 'King's American dispensatory' (1909): 'Rose cold-cream is made similarly of almond oil, rose water, each, 1 pound; white wax, spermaceti, each, 1 ounce; oil of roses, 1/2 drachm.'
Sac: Cristal: (Saccharum Officinarum or Sugar). 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 history in the pharmaceutical industry.
Ong: De Laur: (Laurel Ointment). An ointment made from an extract of the laurel, an ericaceous evergreen, was used to treat syphilis and various skin diseases. It was first used by the Arabians for a variety of symptoms, most commonly nervous headaches.
S: Aven: Sativ: (Wild Oat or Oat Straw). S was an abbreviation for syrupus (syrup). The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides mentions oats as a remedy for coughs in his herbal.
Empl: Cicut: (Hemlock). 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 hemlock (cicuta maculata) used by apothecaries. Some even suggest that the poison Socrates drank was not from hemlock, but aconite.
Ext: de Quinq: (Quina or Quinquina). Extracted from cinchona bark, the drug that was stored in this apothecary jar was used as an antiperiodic, but later alkaloids were chosen for this purpose rather than the cinchona bark extract. During the Revolutionary War, cinchona bark, also known as Peruvian or Jesuits' bark, was used for all fevers, malarial and other, and was among the most essential medications placed into medicine chests for troops.

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