This is a small, greenish glass bottle with a cork stopper and a handwritten paper label.
The inscription on the label reads:
Oil of turpentine, 10 drops in half a tea spoonful of sugar, twice in one week
Each dose towards bed time, a good
drink of tea after a dose
1/6 [one shilling and six pence]
Turpentine is a liquid distilled from tree resin, usually pine trees. It was mainly used as a solvent, but for centuries turpentine was also
used for medicine. When used on the skin it can kill lice or maybe help with cuts. However, as
in this case, people also used to take it internally. It may have helped with
parasites, but we now know it is actually very dangerous and toxic.
Before publicly-funded health care was introduced with the NHS in 1948 many people couldn’t afford to pay for private health care and were not eligible or able to access free charitable care. This is why there was a big market for homemade remedies like this - whether they worked or not, or were even dangerous!
This bottle was sold door-to-door in Tanshelf in the 1920s for
the relatively modest price of one shilling and six pence.
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