{"product_id":"tasteless-castor-oil-label-c-charnley-wilmslow","title":"Vintage 1940s Tasteless Castor Oil Label 🧪 Rare, Have to read!","description":"\u003ch2\u003eHow Do You Not Taste Castor Oil? 🧴 \"Tasteless\" Castor Oil — and the Very Precise Instructions for Not Tasting It\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2 3\/4\" x 1 1\/4\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CX2TDRIwEI0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is an original, unused chemist's label for \u003cstrong\u003eTasteless Castor Oil\u003c\/strong\u003e, issued by \u003cstrong\u003eC. Charnley, Pharmacist, of Wilmslow\u003c\/strong\u003e in Cheshire, England. Black type on cream stock, 2 3\/4 by 1 1\/4 inches, never applied to a bottle. Here is everything printed on it:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTASTELESS CASTOR OIL\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eDOSE.—Half an ounce to one ounce and a half, floating on warm milk, coffee, or on water, and covered with a small quantity of spirit.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eC. CHARNLEY, Pharmacist, WILMSLOW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePlus a four-figure telephone number. No address, no printer's mark, no date, no company name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🥄 Read That Dose Line Again — It Is a Physics Trick\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIf the oil is tasteless, why does it need floating on something and covering with spirit? Because it is \u003cem\u003enot\u003c\/em\u003e tasteless, and everybody involved knew it. What that instruction describes is a three-layer float, built in the glass to keep the oil off your tongue entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCastor oil is lighter than water or milk, so it floats on top of them. Spirit is lighter than castor oil, so it floats on top of \u003cem\u003ethat\u003c\/em\u003e. Follow the instruction exactly and you get milk at the bottom, a layer of oil suspended in the middle, and a thin cap of spirit on the surface. You swallow through the spirit, the oil goes past in the middle without ever touching your tongue, and the milk follows it down. Dispensing chemists ran a more exacting version of the same trick, calculating the relative densities so the dose hung in the glass as a sphere.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat is the whole game. \"Tasteless\" was the marketing; the dose line is the workaround that made the claim survive contact with an actual patient. The trade chased a genuinely tasteless castor oil for decades — formulas from the period reach for saccharin, vanillin, cinnamon and anise oils — and never really got there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e💊 What Castor Oil Actually Was\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCastor oil comes from the seed of \u003cem\u003eRicinus communis\u003c\/em\u003e, and it is one of the oldest medicines we have any record of. It appears in the \u003cstrong\u003eEbers Papyrus\u003c\/strong\u003e around 1550 BC, and castor seeds have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. The \u003cstrong\u003eBritish Pharmaceutical Codex\u003c\/strong\u003e of 1911 calls it \"a mild purgative\" and \"the most valuable laxative available in medicine,\" setting the dose at four to thirty mils and noting it is best given in milk — which is exactly what this label says.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWorth noticing: this label's dose runs up to \u003cem\u003ean ounce and a half\u003c\/em\u003e, which is above the Codex maximum. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏛️ C. Charnley, and the Word \"Pharmacist\"\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat word on the label is a credential, not a job description. The \u003cstrong\u003ePharmacy Act of 1868\u003c\/strong\u003e made it an offense to call yourself a chemist, a druggist, a pharmacist or a dispensing chemist in Britain without being on the register. Printing it was a legal statement about his standing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnd Charnley is unusually well documented for a village chemist. The \u003cstrong\u003eWellcome Collection\u003c\/strong\u003e holds two volumes from the Charnley shop, MSS.8437–8438. One is a pharmacy recipe book running 1866 to 1940, inscribed on its first page \u003cstrong\u003e\"Charles Charnley, 16 May 1866\"\u003c\/strong\u003e — medical, household, cosmetic and culinary preparations, a few veterinary and horticultural ones, written in several hands with periodical cuttings pasted in. The other is a clothbound volume of 1869 to 1925 whose opening pages are a register of prescriptions dispensed to named individuals. A working chemist's shop, on paper, across three generations of handwriting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"Charnley C.\" shows up in the Cheshire trade directories on Grove Street in Wilmslow through the later nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and the shop was still trading under the Grove Pharmacy name in the late 1930s — a notice in the \u003cem\u003eStockport Advertiser\u003c\/em\u003e of \u003cstrong\u003e22 July 1938\u003c\/strong\u003e names C. Charnley at The Grove Pharmacy, Wilmslow. There is a nice cross-check buried in the directories too: one edition marks him with the symbol for a dealer in photographic materials and apparatus, which lines up neatly with the photographic recipes sitting in the shop's recipe book at the Wellcome.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🕰️ How Old Is It? The Name and the Number Tell You\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the detail I like best, and it's printed right along the foot of the label.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt trades as \u003cstrong\u003e\"C. CHARNLEY, Pharmacist\"\u003c\/strong\u003e — a man, personally, with no company and no shop name. A few years after this the shop turned into a limited company, and a business does not un-incorporate, so \u003cstrong\u003ethis label was printed while Charnley was still trading in his own name\u003c\/strong\u003e, before the Ltd went up over the door. The other clue is the telephone number, 3059, a four-figure number the shop kept from at least 1946 into the 1960s. One ink, simple rules, no ornament: a working chemist's label.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Wilmslow paper lets me put years on it. The shop's number was 4X around 1909 to 1913 and 59 from 1914 into at least 1924. By September 1946 the ads read \"Charles Charnley, Pharmacist, Tel. 3059,\" almost word for word this label, and by May 1949 it was Charles Charnley Ltd. So this castor oil label comes from the 3059 years before the Ltd, and the one dated match for its wording is that 1946 advert: it's a 1940s label, and not the 1910s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Wilmslow paper fills in the rest of the story. Charles Charnley was advertising as a dispensing chemist on Grove Street by 1875, the shop's phone number was 4X around 1909 and 59 by 1914, and by 1946 it was \"Charles Charnley, Pharmacist,\" at Wilmslow 3059. Sometime between 1946 and 1949 the business became Charles Charnley Ltd, and in time it added a second shop in nearby Alderley Edge. In 1998 the paper called it Wilmslow's oldest chemist shop and talked to 87-year-old Charles Charnley, whose ancestors, it said, founded the business in 1863.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🧴 About these\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey're 2 3\/4 by 1 1\/4 inches, unused and never put on a bottle - crisp, uncreased and unglued, the paper toned a little with age so the type ghosts faintly through to the back. Frame it small with a note about the Wellcome Collection's Charnley recipe books - it's a perfect present for a pharmacist, or for anybody who was once made to swallow a spoonful of castor oil. The supply is finite - nobody's printing C. Charnley labels again, and once these last unused ones are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-cocillana-morphine-pharmacy-label-covington-ky-treasures\"\u003eVintage 1940s Cocillana Morphine Cough Syrup Label 💊 Morwessel Drugs Covington KY\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/1910s-antique-formalin-pharmacy-label-aka-formaldehyde-cure-throat\"\u003eAntique 1910s Formalin Pharmacy Label 🧪 AKA Formaldehyde to cure your throat?\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/arsenate-lead-poison-label-glens-drug-store-auburn-ne-skull-crossbones\"\u003eAntique 1930s Arsenate of Lead Pharmacy Label ☠️ Glen’s Drug Store Auburn NE\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41670630899944,"sku":"VAG-7331240509672","price":8.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.3397592574_t12g.jpg?v=1785355712","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/tasteless-castor-oil-label-c-charnley-wilmslow","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}