Old Things
The Pharmacy Chick loves old things; well not ALL old things, but since she is half way to “old” herself, she has an appreciation for things now commonly called “vintage”. Actually..many may think I am vintage already, and some days I feel that way. Since Mr. Chick does not share my love for vintage things however, I rarely get to fulfill my cravings. He doesn’t understand, and if we happen upon a junk shop together, (and I happen to get to go inside), I seldom buy anything because he sees it as garbage. And no, my house does not look like an old farm house with antiques hanging off of nails everywhere…as I said, Mr Chick does not love old things.
I love the smell of antique shops. I love to look at history, and really to me, it IS history. It just happens to be ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, average joe, bottom-of-the-closet history. Records, old pens, kitchen stuff, furniture, books, clothes, you name it. I love to look at it all. I gravitate towards old Pyrex, and I have several pieces. I love to cook in my old Pyrex. Who knows how many meals were whipped up in those old bowls and casserole dishes I have. I have no doubt I paid more for my antique Pyrex than I would for a new piece, but nobody makes those old designs and colors that I grew up with and I just get the warm fuzzies when I see them in my cupboards. Who gets warm fuzzies from new stuff anyway?
I also love pharmacy antiques. If I didn’t exercise some restraint, I would buy every pill bottle and piece of pharmacy glassware I came upon. I would also be broke, because apparently pharmacy antiques has fans other than myself based on the price some of these pieces fetch. I do however have quite a nice collection in a lovely glass case of pieces I “couldn’t live without”. Some of them were gifts, others were great finds. Years ago I used to work in a small store that had something called an antique mall next to it. Really it was a building where you could rent a few square feet and display your wares to sell. Every monday I would walk over on my lunch hour and gaze at all the wonders therein. I bought some great Pyrex there…(remember my pyrex fetish? what Mr Chick does not ask about, Mr Chick doesn’t need to KNOW about) . I also found a few lovely pharmacy antiques. I also found these places to be sad too–I often wondered about the previous owners of all these things. I wonder what they would think if they saw hundreds of people rooting thru their belongings. Will my things be in a place like this someday? Ok, THAT makes me sad.
When I buy my pharmacy antiques, I do have some requirements. They have to be interesting, and they have to have their original products in them. Once I happened upon a vendor who had emptied all of her bottles of their contents, and spiffed them up all nice and clean. I can’t imagine she had been in the business very long– I told her she had ruined the value of every piece. Her argument was that the contents could be dangerous. I told her anybody crazy enough to ingest the contents of a bottle 100 years old deserves whatever he gets.
Here are some of my favorite finds:
McCormicks Insecticide powder for Body Crawling Insects– came in a shaker tin like spices do. Ewww–I’m thinking regular bathing would have gone a long way back then to alleviate the Body-Crawling-Insect problem and this powder might not have been necessary.
Chamberlains Pills for Constipation: active ingredient? Mercury. It also said keep out of reach of children. I’d say keep out of reach of everybody and call the Hazmat team. Thankfully whoever purchased these pink gems never opened it.
Chamberlains Tonic for Flatulent Wind Colic: Chamberlain had issues with his GI tract apparently.. Ative ingredients: Chloroform, ether, camphor and ginger. I am guessing that “flatulent wind colic” is a rather creative name for “burp”, and again, I am not sure how using these two anesthetics would help, but maybe the ginger.
Yohimone: Active ingredients: Yohimbine, Pituitary hormone, thyroid hormone and supradrenal gland hormone (desicated). Althought it didn’t specifically SAY it was for men, I would guess that this was to help the male humanoid in his oat-sowing department.
Prescription number 15 by Red Star: never lists ingredients but apparently was good for sore throats! Personally I would love to have 1-14 also.
Litharge: Lead monoxide. yes, LEAD. This was in a pharmacy, it was open and it weighs a ton for such a small bottle. nuff said.
Darn, now I am in the mood to buy more….must….supress…urge….to….shop…..
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