Take once a year for four months... Beautiful Trips: Autumn. Courtesy the Thackray Museum.

There are some things that pills just can’t treat – the winter blues, loneliness, guilt… until now. The Thackray Museum promises a remedy for all sorts of incurable feelings in its exhibition Medicine for the Soul, on until April 3.

Artists have bottled treatments for modern-day stresses and concerns and put them on display in twenty specially made medicine cabinets. They sound more interesting than Damian Hirst’s, too, containing such medications as Essence of Omnipresence (lets you be in more than one place at a time) and Absolve (absolves sins!).

The exhibition was born of a mailart project supported by the Arts Council, in which contributors were asked to describe prescriptions for living. The unique therapies now on show at the Thackray were developed from these ideas by artist Graham Martin, who was inspired by Yoko Ono, Zen Buddhism and Tibetan medicine.

Gambling on an untried antidote? Courtesy the Thackray.

“One day I decided to empty some pills out of a jar and replace them with paint, and suddenly I thought, hey, these are pills for ‘internal painting’, which seemed quite interesting,” said Graham.

He described the exhibition as “an exploration of contemporary psyche. I’m exploring the contemporary Western mind. I’m working with others to produce something insightful about attitudes and beliefs within culture – about the way we live our lives. Communication is at the heart of the piece. It’s a dialogue exploring people, ideas and cultures.”

Heart pills — the kiss of life. Courtesy the Thackray.

Other medicines not available over the counter include Nu View, which puts your life into perspective, and Aspirins for Life – large enough that you never need take one again, but also too big to actually use.

The 24 Hour Museum prescribes a trip to the Thackray, at least once this winter, keeping an eye on the museum’s programme of events and lectures.