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Queen Victoria's personal travelling medicine case is to be offered for sale by Christie's, South Kensington, next month, writes Marianne Macdonald.

The leather case, containing 15 glass bottles with descriptive paper labels, most from Squire and Son of London, the chemist to the Royal Family, is stamped in gilt with "The Queen".

Estimated at £2,000 to £3,000, the bottles provide a revealing insight into the emergency items the Queen required with her at all times: atropine lotion for neuralgia, glycerine for chilblains or constipation, spirit of rosemary to stimulate hair growth, and tincture of opium for diarrhoea.

The other bottles offer relief for an array of problems: bi-meconate of morphia (a painkiller), chloroform (an anaesthetic), Goulard's extract (a sedative), belladonna liniment (for rheumatism), and camphor liniment (carbolic poisoning).

The case's appearance on the market follows the sale of Queen Victoria's dental set for £15,400 last August.