An English rural apothecary's shop in which women apothecaries produce eye-lotion from their own urine. Watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson, ca. 1800 (?).

The watercolour shows a rural medical practitioner, a woman, not young, using her own urine to create a medicine which she offers for sale for rubbing on the eyes to dispel bad humours of the eye. She urinates in the right foreground into a funnel over a chemical vessel; another, younger woman urinates in the left background into a funnel placed in a barrel, and a cat urinates in the left foreground on to the ground

"Humours in the eyes" which are mentioned on the signboard seem to have been a kind of disease, possibly cataract. The recipe book of Deborah Bragge (also called Deborah Branch), Wellcome Library MS 1343, has a recipe "For a homour in the eyes. Take a popey head break it into half a pint of watter Lett it be ready to boil then take it off and dape the eyes with it it curred Dr Trotters childs eyes for a homour that fell in them after the small pox" (fol. 79r)

[1800?]

1 painting : watercolour ; sheet 22.2 x 18.3 cm, mount 28.2 x 24.6 cm

The village doctress distilling eyewater The signboard in the window bears the lettering: "Humours in the eyes effectually cured by Deborah Pisillan". One of the apothecary jars in the background has the label "Best double distilled". The watercolour has an old mount inscribed in a hand similar to Rowlandson's "The village doctress distilling eyewater" (possibly written by him)

Wellcome Collection 645283i