| Description Of Item | A small cylindrical medicine vial filled with light-brown pills, labelled ‘Dover’s Powder Representing 2 ½ grs.’.
Dover’s Powder found popularity as an ‘admirable anodyne diaphoretic’ (Wood, Bache, 1874, p.1368), and was named after its inventor, Thomas Dover; Dover’s creation was widely prescribed, hailed for its usefulness ‘in rheumatism, diarrhoea, dysentery, latter stages of bronchitis, and pneumonia’ (Hartshorne, 1874, p.544). Probably born in Warwickshire around 1660, Dover studied medicine at Cambridge before setting sail in 1708 as a privateer on an expedition to the South Seas; in 1721, after years of travelling, he settled in London, becoming a Licentiate at the Royal College of Physicians of London despite never actually graduating as a doctor (Osler, 1896, p.4). He later wrote of the wisdom his travels had afforded him in his expertise as a physician, mocking his peers who had never left Britain (Osler, 1896, p.11). This expertise led to the formulation of his ‘famous powder’, which consisted of opium, salt-petre (potassium nitrate), tartar, and ipocacuana (ipecacuanha), drank as part of a white wine posset – this is the formula that appears in all editions of his 1732 book, The Ancient Physician’s Legacy to His Country, being what he has collected himself in Forty-Nine Years of Practice (Osler, 1896, p.14).
Salt-petre, or potassium nitrate, was used throughout the 18th and 19th centuries as a ‘refrigerant and diuretic’, to promote perspiration and relax the ‘spasmodic rigidity of the vessels’ in cases of ‘acute rheumatisms’ and ‘inflammatory fevers’; it is, however, ‘one of the most fatal poisons’ if too much is taken (Thacher, 1817, p.295). Ipecacuanha, a root native to South America, had already been used in Europe since the 17th century as a cure for dysentery, as a ‘gentle astringent’ in cases of digestive issues, and as a strong emetic resulting from its primary alkaloid, emetia (Buchan, 1809, pp.2-4). Combined with the powerful analgesic effects of opium, Dover’s Powder was therefore prescribed for a wide array of disorders involving ‘painful affections’ and the need for ‘profuse diaphoresis’, such as pneumonia, dysentery, rheumatism, haemorrhages, bowel affections, and diarrhoea (Wood, Bache, 1874, pp.1368-1369). It was a massively addictive substance as a result of its high opium content, making it a very popular remedy amongst patients; this was until the powder declined in use throughout the first half of the next century in favour of new drugs. Nonetheless, it is thought to have been used in the UK up until the 1960s.
References
Bache, F., Wood, G, B. 1874. The Dispensatory of the United States of America. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Buchan, A. P. (1809) ‘Advertisement’, in M. Daubenton, Observations on indigestion: in which is satisfactorily shewn the efficacy of ipecacuan, in relieving this, as well as its connected train of complaints peculiar to the decline of life, 1-4, London: J. Callow.
Hartshorne, H. 1874. A conspectus of the medical sciences: comprising manuals of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, materia medica, practice of medicine, surgery and obstetrics, for the use of students. Philadelphia: Lea.
Osler, W. 1896. Thomas Dover (of Dover's powder): physician and buccaneer. Baltimore: Friedenwald Co.
Thacher, J. 1817. The American new dispensatory: containing general principles of pharmaceutic chemistry ; chemical analysis of the articles of materia medica ; pharmaceutic operations; materia medica, including several new and valuable articles, the production of the United States ; preparations and compositions ; with an appendix, containing an account of mineral waters ; medical prescriptions ; the nature and medical uses of the gases ; medical electricity ; galvanism ; an abridgment of Dr. Currie's reports on the use of water ; the cultivation of the poppy plant, and the method of preparing opium ; and several useful tables ; the whole compiled from the most approved authors, both European and American. Boston: Thomas B. Wait and Sons. |