Surgeon Beatty’s Medicine Chest, 1803

These charming English School portraits show the subjects half-length by a desk, the surgeon with a skull at his elbow and his wife with an open writing box. Oil on canvas within a gilded frame and accompanied by five related letters. English, circa 1810. Footnote: Robert Prideaux died aged 36 in 1818 but in his short life he managed to rise rapidly through the ranks as a naval surgeon. The Naval Chronicle Vol. 19 (1808) records his appointment as a surgeon, aged only 26, on the cutter Sprightly and that he moved to the Lily by the end of the same year. In 1809, a member of the crew of the vessel Polyphemus was involved in a drunken incident that culminated in him being sick on the quarter-deck of the Lily whilst both vessels were docked at Port Royal in Jamaica. This led to a Court Martial appearance for one Joseph Fountain, the Master at Arms...

A Scottish builder’s cased half hull model of a herring drifter, the carved yellow pine hull with ebonized box sides and stringing and gilt propeller, plain decks with wooden fittings including anchor davits, cleats, cut away masts with silk swallow tail flags, net trawling gear, coal chute covers...

An invaluable addition to the 19th century home, this domestic medicine chest contained nearly everything needed to nurse a member of the house...

Original patinated leather medicine ball from the 1950s. A set of two.