This travelling medicine cabinet was made in Augsburg, Germany, in the early seventeenth century where it would have been called a Reiseapotheke. First used by surgeons serving on merchant and naval vessels, they became popular in aristocratic households.

Some of these cabinets could contain as many as 300 small bottles and vials as well as surgical instruments. This cabinet still contains its original glass and silver bottles, a ladle, bowl, ebonised wood and silver boxes, a mirror and even a tongue depressor.