ARTIFACT IMAGE
Medicine Box Item Info
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- Title:
- Medicine Box
- Date:
- 1870
- Description:
- Tin medicine box with several paper sachets of herbal remedies
- Marks/Inscriptions :
- Hand painted floral motifs
- Geographies:
- Rhode Island, United States
- Material:
- Tin, paper, various herbs
- Provenance:
- Paulina Kenyon Foster
- Quaker connection:
- Paulina Kenyon Foster
- Object Story, Consumption and Use:
- Paulina Kenyon Foster was a Quaker woman who lived in Rhode Island in the late 19th century. She practiced as a community nurse, though there are no records of her patients or how frequently she worked. She did, however, own several books on herbal remedies and took meticulous notes in the margins. Her enthusiastic compiling of resources through the annotation of her books and her collection of various herbs demonstrates that not only was Paulina passionate about her role as a community nurse, she was likely quite good at what she did. Most Quaker medicine boxes from this region and time period were made of wood or paper, and are not as finely decorated as Paulina’s metal box, pointing us towards one of the big mysteries of this object: where did the box come from? We know when she owned it and what she used it for, but there is no record of her actually acquiring the case. The other great mystery of this object is where she sourced her herbs from. She likely kept her own garden, but several of the herbs in this box don’t grow in the Northeastern U.S., so where did she get them? Not only is this object fascinating for the broader story it can tell about the intersection of women, medical practices, and herbalism in the 19th century, but also because of its utilitarian practicality, which is balanced with delicately hand-painted floral designs.
- Type:
- Image;StillImage
- Format:
- image/jpg
- Accession Number:
- SC-FHL-R-1361.
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "Medicine Box", From Local to Global - Consumption and the Quaker Body, Swarthmore College, https://swat-ds.github.io/material-culture/material-culture/items/mc017.html