RCSI Heritage Collections

As the number of shopping days left before Christmas continues to dwindle, RCSI Heritage Collections decided to have a look at what was on offer to those in the medical world in times gone by. By looking at advertisements in the back of the  Medical Directory  series, which spans from 1852 to today, you could pick a variety of items for those hard to get and not so hard to get people in your life. Let's have a look at what was on offer..... For the ladies, why not get the most fashionable figure hugging under apparel? An ad for Bailey's Ladies Bandages and Belts from 1853. 'No Lady Should Be Without One' - who can argue with that!  Spirella Figure Foundation Garments from 1936. How about that person who is always trying new health fads? How yummy, orange peel flavoured cod liver oil tablets?! From 1853. Many would try and claim that beer can aid sickness..... From 1889. Valentine's Meat Juice from 1936. Say no more!  Not forgetting...

Is there anything more romantic than giving your loved one a bottle of Valentine's Meat Juice this Valentine's Day?  A bottle of Valentine's Meat Juice still sealed and containing juice (RCSI/MI/1544) There is if you use it to disguise the taste of arsenic as Florence Maybrick did in 1889! But first what is Valentine's Meat juice? Brought into production in Richmond, VA, in 1871, Valentine’s Meat Juice became popular with orthodox physicians and was advertised in professional publications, including the   British Medical Journal . Its inventor, Mann S.Valentine, told of its origins in his   A Brief History of the  Production of Valentine’s Meat Juice, together with  Testimonials of the Medical Profession   (1874). A family member, thought to be his wife Anna Maria Grey Valentine, was in great danger from ‘ a severe and protracted  derangement of the organs of digestion .’ She could not take normal food, yet none of the available inv...