An extensive apothecary’s notebook spanning the second half of the nineteenth century and including detailed instructions for the preparation of a wide-range of remedies, salves, potions and solutions, including gout mixture, “harmless hair cleanser”, cold creams, skin lotions, shampoos, “Mr. Philpott’s Cough Balls”, “hair restorer”, “tincture of myrrh & borax”, gazogene powder, “quinine tooth powder”, “children’s cough mist, ‘blackcurrant’”, “violet powder”, “sciatica drops”, “toothache tincture”, “acid pepsine indigestion elixir”, various mixtures involving cocaine, perfumes including “Italian Bouquet” and “Eau de Bologna” (with some suitable splashes of a crimson powder on this page), “essence for smelling bottles”, “Sir John Fisher’s Diarrhoea Mixture”, and ballroom floor polish, as well as instructions as to ”the simplest mode of obtaining phosphorous” and how “to coat pills with sugar”.

The fact that the book is written in several hands, with entries marked by their author’s initials, and completed over a number of years, indicates that it may well have been used in a specific apothecary/chemist’s shop, with different people adding recipes/information to it as and when.