Sealing Wax and other Fancy Stuff

We just bought a cool medical recipe book that was kept by Thomas Chadbourne, an early graduate of the Dartmouth Medical School (now the Geisel School of Medicine) who later set up practice in Concord. The notebook is from his days in Hanover and he attributed several of his recipes to Nathan Smith, founder of the Dartmouth Medical School.

While this is nice documentation of the early days of medical training at Dartmouth, it also says something about how doctors saved and organized information. Medical recipes were handed down from mentor to student, and kept for further reference. But the same recipe book that contains medicinal mixtures for "bone ointment," "whooping cough," and "cholera morbus" also has recipes for varnish and for sealing wax. In fact, the sealing wax recipe is right next to a note about the correct dosage of opium for asthma and other lung ailments. I guess that would be the "other fancy stuff."

This just arrived so it isn't cataloged yet, but it will be soon.