Before modern science explained how diseases are contracted and transmitted, people relied on a mixture of folk tradition and the sometimes eccentric medical theories of the time to combat illness.

This poster (ref: PE/BT/MI 1) suggests that to treat rabies, the patient should mix "the leaves of Rue", "Venice Treacle" and "the scrapings of Pewter" and then:

"Boil all these together over a slow fire in Two Quarts of Strong Ale (not Porter) till one pint be consumed: then keep it in a bottle, closely stopped, and give of it Nine Table Spoonfuls to a Man or Woman, warm, seven mornings together fasting; and Six to a Dog"

There are many other examples of such remedies to be found within our collections. A document entitled 'A preservative against the Plague' (ref: D.1/2695), probably dating from the late 17^th or early 18^th century, suggests that a concoction including "some sage", a "pennyworth of longe pepper", "halfe an ounce of ginger" and a "quarter of an ounce of nutmeg" can cure the plague, alleging that:

"This drinke hath cured the Plague when it hath come out in Spots being given three Spoonfulls att a tyme and the partie [is] said to Sweat it [i.e. 'sweat out' the illness]"

A later memorandum book belonging to a Thomas Barnes of Poole (ref: D.1543/1), dated 1850, contains a cure for the common cold, which consists of "half pint of Rum", 2 ounces of "Sugar candey" and 2 ounces of "Spanish Leckerish" [liquorice]. After mixing the ingredients, and leaving it for 24 hours, the sufferer is instructed to "Teake a wine Glass full every day".

By this time, the sale of medicinal remedies had becoming a potentially lucrative business, and Victorian newspapers are peppered with adverts for a huge range of pills, ointments and oils, each seemingly more fantastic in its curative properties than the last. An advert from the Dorset County Chronicle in 1890 states that:

"Beecham's Pills are universally admitted to be worth a Guinea a Box for Billious and Nervous Disorders such as wind and pain in the stomach, sick headache, giddiness, fullness and swelling after meals, dizziness, and drowsiness, cold chills, flushing or heats, loss of appetite, shortness of breath, costiveness, scurvy, blotches on the skin, disturbed sleep, frightful dreams, and all nervous and trembling sensations, &c."

Presumably these pills were not, however, effective against hypochondria or gullibility ...