£404
A Private Collection of Seals: Highlights from The Matrix Collection | 749
Auction: 19 May 2023 at 11:00 BST
the baluster handle to a brass collar and matrix, engraved with 'PREPARED BY JOSEPH WESSELS SURGEON GENUINE PATENT JESUITS DROPS'
Note:
Printed in The Edinburgh Advertiser, Tuesday 11th February 1772, an advertisement for Dr. Walker's Patent Genuine Jesuit Drops
'CAUTION to the PUBLIC.
By the King’s Patent.
DR. WALKER’S PATENT GENUINE JESUITS DROPS
...at 2s. 6d. each bottle; and specific purging remedy, at 2s 6d. per pot which are the most certain, cheap, pleasant, safe, effectual and immediate cure ever discovered for gleets, and seminal weaknesses...'
Robert Walker obtained the King’s Royal Letters Patent for his remedy in 1755, and rested heavily on the religious connotation of Jesuits, to promote his medicinal relief, similar to the Carmelite nuns before him and their carmelite drops. Dr. Walker's concoction was in fact an elixir to alleviate venereal disease.
After his death, surgeon Joseph Wessels adopted the marketing with Wessel’s Jesuit Drops, on sale as late as the 1870s.