Stone Drugs and Calamine Lotion: Chemical Analysis of Residue in Nineteenth-Century Glass Bottles, Market Street Chinatown, San Jose, California

Abstract

Chemical residue analysis was used in this study to identify the contents of 10 glass medicinal bottles and vials in the nineteenth-century Market Street Chinatown collection from San Jose, California. Analyses were carried out using both classical techniques and modern instrumental methods. Chemical changes in the analytes, brought about by prolonged environmental exposure, introduced an unavoidable degree of uncertainty into all chemical identifications. Seven bottles yielded residues most likely representing mineral-based “stone drugs” used to treat a variety of ailments in traditional Chinese medicine. Three bottles contained calamine lotion, a zinc-based topical preparation used in both China and North America. These discoveries highlight the role of mineral-based medicines in treating diseases, ameliorating symptoms, and promoting health in nineteenth-century San Jose, California. The study findings also indicate that the location of bottle manufacture and bottle form alone do not provide sufficient information to determine whether a nineteenth-century medicinal bottle contained allopathic, homeopathic, or traditional Chinese medicine.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.