Rugby Art Gallery and Museum has the perfect tonic

Curious Cures and Marvellous Medicines delves into the museum's social history collection to chart the development of medical science.

The exhibition features a host of medical instruments, including a tonsil snare and syringes, and medicine bottles, many from Rugby-based pharmacies past and present, such as H Cook, Wilford Smith and Paddox Pharmacy.

Old advertisements for weird and wonderful medicines also form part of the exhibition, including a cure for television eye-strain which promised to make eyes feel "as fresh and sparkling as a dew-drenched rose in the morning sun."

Curious Cures and Marvellous Medicines also includes an interactive children's play area, complete with a chemist shop.

Catherine Shanahan, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum's senior collections officer, said the inspiration for the exhibition followed a review of items in the social history collection.

"We secured funding from the West Midlands Museum Development programme to hire an expert from Worcester's George Marshall Medical Museum to review the medical items in the collection, many of which were donated by local doctors," Catherine explained.

"It helped us to identify many of the more unusual items and learn how to handle and store some of the medicines we have."

Curious Cures and Marvellous Medicines opens at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum on Saturday (21 September) and runs until 14 March.

Cllr Jill Simpson-Vince, Rugby Borough Council portfolio holder for growth and investment said: "Social history exhibitions always prove popular at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, and Curious Cures and Marvellous Medicines features items which have never been put on public display before.

"The exhibition promises to give a unique insight into the ever-changing world of medicine."

For more information about exhibitions and events at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, visit www.ragm.co.uk 

Photo caption: A bottle from Paddox Pharmacy which stored potentially deadly arsenic, a substance which also has medicinal uses.