If you are a Baby Boomer like me, you probably remember the remedies often used by your parents when you became sick or injured. Most families then did not have an overflowing medicine cabinet with dozens and dozens of medications like those of people today. Parents relied upon what they considered “tried and true” remedies they knew very well to treat their kids. Some of these medications had been around a long, long time.
Three staples I vividly remember were Fletcher’s Castoria, Vicks VapoRub, and Mercurochrome. I hated to get ill or hurt because I knew I faced these treatments, which to me were worse than the affliction I had suffered.
Fletcher’s Castoria
My dad's answer to any illness was what he called a “physic” – a purgative, an evacuant, a laxative. He was a major proponent of “being regular” for good health. Of course, I had faced the dreaded spoonfuls of castor oil treatment – quickly followed with a teaspoon of sugar– a ritual used by many parents as a once-a-year tuneup for the system. I even remember cod-liver oil, a disgusting liquid literally squeezed from the fermenting livers of cod fish.
No kid alive could stomach these oils – neither castor nor cod liver. The administration of such products often led to laxative tantrums.
“Castor oil was one of those dirty words that I never wanted to hear when I was growing up. It seemed to be a cure for everything because every time I turned around, somebody was standing there with a spoonful of the nasty stuff, just waiting to poke it into my mouth. It's flavor was enough to make me sicker than I ever thought of being.”
– Sharon Brown, retired high school art and humanities teacher.
Dad used a physic for any illness I got. Thank God improvements over castor oil and cod liver oil came during my childhodd. Not nearly as nasty as castor oil, Castoria was advertised as a children's laxative designed to accommodate their “delicate” systems. The remedy has a longstanding history. One writer with tongue-in-cheek said, “Fletcher’s Castoria: the way to digestive and family harmony. Without it, you might end up slapping the kids around.”
Dr. Samuel Pitcher (1824-1907) of Barnstable, Massachusetts, an1850 Harvard Medical School graduate, composed the cathartic of senna, sodium bicarbonate, essence of wintergreen, dandelion, sugar and water. The remedy was initially sold under the name Pitcher's Castoria.
In 1871, Fletcher and Rose bought the formula from Dr. Pitcher and renamed the laxative “Fletcher's Castoria.” It became wildly successful. In fact, when funding ran short for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, Fletcher offered to construct the statue's base in exchange for permission to advertise Castoria on the statue, but this offer was rejected. “Children cry for Chas. H. Fletcher's Castoria” was one of the most widely recognizable advertising slogans at the beginning of the 20th century.
Over time the product formula has changed. The medicine was heavily promoted on ads and billboards in the late 1800s and early part of the 20th Century, and evidently the paint used for the ads was of a very high grade, because several ads survive to this day all over town.
Here is a 1940 Life Magazine advertisement for Fletcher’s Castoria. Apparently the company liked to use corporal punishment in its ads; there are more examples.
Vicks VapoRub
Whenever I had even a hint of a cough, my mother would generously slather my chest and throat with Vapor Rub at bedtime. Sometimes, she would place a towel or a washcloth across my chest to prevent the Vapor Rub from smearing on my pajamas or whatnot. I hated the treatment – it was smelly and sticky and, to me, an uncomfortable mess. Mom and Dad believed in Vicks, and, I must say, it did seem to help quell the coughing.
In 1894, the Greensboro pharmacist Lunsford Richardson II developed a mentholated topical ointment, Vicks Magic Croup Salve, to cure a common infant affliction: congestion and a barking cough. Named for Richardson’s brother-in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick, according to some, and for the Vick seed catalog according to others, it was later rebranded as Vicks VapoRub. Hardly a one-off effort, VapoRub was only one among Richardson’s 21 patented remedies.
Richardson caught the bug and died during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic – an ironic fate, since the flu helped sales of his ointment rise from $900,000 to $2.9 million that year; Richardson’s descendants have even claimed the product “saved America from the flu.”
The VapoRub we know is now owned by the American consumer goods company Procter & Gamble. It is intended for use on the chest, back and throat for cough suppression or on muscles and joints for minor aches and pains. It has also been used to treat mosquito bites. People today even use it to deter toenail fungus or rub it in palomino stallions' nostrils to prevent them from scenting mares in heat.
That pungent odor? VapoRub is a compound of petrolatum, cedarleaf oil, nutmeg oil, thymol, and turpentine oil; the active components are camphor, menthol, and eucalyptus oil.
Alison Kinney of The Atlantic explains:
“Because camphor is highly toxic when ingested, in 1983 the FDA mandated that over-the-counter products may contain no more than 11% of the substance. As for menthol, it can make just about any part of your body feel cooler, kill tracheal mites in honeybees, and make floral perfumes smell more flowery. Eucalyptus oil has many boring medicinal uses. And petroleum jelly, a byproduct of crude oil refining which we have no qualms about smearing on babies, makes things besides babies pleasantly slippery, like hairballs in cats, or terrarium walls for the thwarting of gecko escape.
“With all these properties and potential uses, the only surprising thing about the pervasively reposted “12 Surprising Uses for Vicks VapoRub” is that human ingenuity has not yet exhausted all its possibilities.”
(Alison Kinney, “Vicks VapoRub and Me.” The Atlantic. July 10, 2014.)
Bruce Rubin of the Department of Pediatrics at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine told Scientific American …
“Vicks is not bad. It does what it is meant to do: It gives the brain the sensation of relief of stuffiness, menthol triggers specific cold receptors in the nose and bronchial tubes. That is why it has been added to cigarettes called things like Kool. If you can’t sleep because you are so congested, and put it on your chest, it makes you feel better. It doesn’t open things up—but for most kids, it doesn’t plug things up, either. Vicks doesn’t improve air flow, but it does give that same sensation of increased air flow.”
(Alison Kinney, “Vicks VapoRub and Me.” The Atlantic. July 10, 2014.)
Mecurohrome
The standard treatment for childhood cuts and scrapes was initially iodine. Count me in the crowd of kids who would rather endure a thousand cuts before letting Mom or Dad put Iodine on my wound. That stuff burned like fire … and the pain seemingly lasted for many minutes after application. When it touched the skin, you couldn't even remain in one place – you took off screaming and running around in circles like a banshee. Parents would try to distract you, bribe you with a lollypop or popsickle, or tell you the biggest lie – “This won't hurt” – but that stuff stung like hell. Parents would try to soothe the iodine-treated kid by saying, “The hurt means its killing germs.” The coverup didn't work!
Along came a reddish orange liquid antiseptic called Mecurohrome. Most folks under the age of 30 have never even heard of this topical antiseptic. Mercurochrome became the go-to in lieu of that nasty stinging Iodine. Sure it still hurt (Not as bad?) stained your flesh pinkish-red, but you could probably wear that temporarily as a battle scar. At least, that's what the Greatest Generation tried to sell to us.
The very sight of that glass tube freaked out the bravest kid. It was an evil-looking design that no child my age will never forget.
“When a child fell and got a cut or scrape, out came the mercurochrome in a little bottle with a glass tube attached to the inside of the cap. The tube was dipped in the solution and used to paint the mercurochrome all over the surface of the wound. Then a Band-Aid, or gauze patch with some tape went over that to keep it clean. Everyone did this.”
– Anonymous
Mercurochrome was a mercury-containing compound. Moms kept an abundant supply of Mercurochrome around and a scraped knee or small finger cut got a little sting and turned red with its application. Others remember that “little sting” still “burned like hell.” Needless to say Baby Boomers hid millions and millions of cuts and scrapes from their parents in fear of the treatments.
Mercurochrome (technically known as merbromin) is off the drug store shelves. Has it been banned? Well, sort of.
Even though Mercurochrome had just a small amount of mercury, mercury poisoning was a consideration. (You may recall the recent FDA advisory that warned pregnant women and young children not to eat certain fish because of high mercury levels.) To affect testing, the FDA pulled the GRAS status and classified mercurochrome as a "new drug" in 1998, which meant that anyone wanting to sell it nationwide had to put it through the rigorous and costly approval process. No one did, and the FDA forbade the sale of Mercurochrome across state lines, which effectively killed the product.
No comments:
Post a Comment