Antimonial cup

The antimonial cup would be employed in order to facilitate repeated doses of overeating by a followup of purging.

As a method to circumvent the law, metal tin cups were made with antimony as one of its ingredients.

[6] Antimonial cups are extremely rare as only six are known in Great Britain, all in London, two in the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Leiden), one in Basel, Switzerland, one in Italy in the former papal palace in Ariccia and another one in London believed to have belonged to Captain James Cook, the English navigator.

The provenance shows that it was acquired on loan in 1983 from Lady Rowley, daughter of the 8th Viscount Galway, Governor General of New Zealand.

Cook was involved in the St Lawrence Expedition of 1759 under the joint command of Admiral Sir Edward Saunders and General Wolfe.

[7] There is an antimonial cup at the Geological Museum, London, that has an inscription on the shield of the small ornamental lid that reads, Du bist ein Wunder der Natur und aller Menschen sichere Cur ("You are a wonder of nature and for all people a certain cure").

Although there were other kinds of emetics in this time period available, many households possessed an antimonial cup of their own.