Cough remedies rely heavily on placebo effect, which this article relates to factors such as sweetness and other flavor considerations, odor, color, viscosity of syrup (thick is perceived as more effective than watery) and the credentials of who prescribes them.
“An early edition of the Merck’s manual [9] lists 61 treatments for cough, including carbolic acid, alcohol, cannabis, indica, creosote, morphine, potassium bromide, sandalwood oil, and zinc sulfate, and describes cod-liver oil as the most useful of all remedies in cough. All of these cough medicines are likely to have had some beneficial placebo effect and reduced the severity of cough, and that is why they were regularly prescribed by physicians and regularly pleased patients. When patients are given any cough medicine, they usually feel better and the severity of their cough is reduced but it is difficult to separate out any pharmacological effect of the medicine from any placebo effect unless the treatment is compared with a placebo treatment in a double-blind randomized clinical trial.”
People seeing a bunch of impressive-sounding ingredients in a cough medicine (morphine, chloroform, dextromethorphan etc.) likely figure that such stuff, even if present in non-pharmacologic doses or of doubtful efficacy) will ease their coughing. And so it does, at least for awhile.
Hey, if a placebo works, it works. I used to give my small children a spoonful of “placebo” when they were little, if they were sick but didn’t have a fever and didn’t need antibiotics. We washed out a children’s Tylenol bottle, filled it with a mixture of water, corn syrup, and red food coloring, and labeled it “placebo”. It was slightly embarrassing when my teenagers found the bottle and asked what it was… But it always made them feel better, and i wasn’t worried about accidentally poisoning them.
Yep. DM does jack shit for me. Many years ago I did get prescribed a cough syrup that actually worked. I can’t remember what it was called, but it wasn’t codeine (unless there was a brand name for it I wouldn’t have known.) I was shocked at how well it worked. With my experiences with cough syrup, I was just expecting another bullshit medicine that does little to nothing for my cough. Many months later I tried to get a refill for another cold I had. The pharmacy wouldn’t honor it because, well, my doctor had apparently been over-prescribing opioids and had his license suspended. Whoops. But that’s when I learned it was something opioid-related that worked for me.
If a standard dose of dextromethorphan does nothing, you might try taking more. I was taking a prescription dose my doctor gave me. It’s possible if i had taken the OTC dose i wouldn’t have had such a horrible reaction (and who knows, maybe it wouldn’t have worked so well for the cough.)
But people do react very different to these things. The dose of codeine i take that is miserably helpful for my cough, and otherwise does almost nothing to me, is enough to wipe my husband out. But he can take dextromethorphan.
Thomas Carlyle and his wife both suffered from constipation, probably from the amount of fat in their diet. The patent medicines they took for this included such substances as mercury, which couldn’t have done their general health any good at all. She died of a heart attack (probably, as no autopsy was performed) at 65.
Oh absolutely. When I was prescribed oxycodone after getting a wisdom tooth pulled, I admit, I was a little excited to try a narcotic. Unfortunately, that commonly abused prescription drug didn’t feel any different than popping a Tylenol or Advil. I took like three doses before giving up on it. Coulda make a buck on the secondary with that, I think. But you really are the first person I’ve met that has said DM works for them, and spectacularly so. Figured it must work on some people.
Ammonium chloride appears to still be a component of Benadryl syrup, in Australia.
A quick Google search revealed this, and that AC can be very toxic to people with reduced kidney function, and should not be given to children under 6.
Back in the day, medications were often formulated to taste as unpleasant as possible, because many people believed that bad-tasting medicines worked better. (But not TOO bad, or they wouldn’t take it, or get their kids to take it!) This may be one way that song “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” originated.
As for placebos, some doctors used to order those, especially as sleep aids for people in the hospital or a nursing home. There was actually an oral formulation dubbed “Obecalp”, which were basically sugar pills.
For me, it’s mainly the syrup component that calms my cough, when I have one. When Buckley’s Mixture, whose advertising said it didn’t taste good, became very hard to find in the U.S., I went ahead and ordered a $35 bottle of it (120ml, approximately 4 ounces) from Canada. Totally worth it.
p.s. @pulykamell, that may have been Tussionex. That’s good stuff too.
My sister is a retired pharmacist. While in school she borrowed a scrapbook from one of her professors who had an unusual hobby of collecting antique prescription slips. Goodness only knows where he found them. I got to look at the book and good grief, you should have seen how much cocaine, heroin and morphine was being given out.
I use a time-release DM + Guaifenesin pill at normal dosage, and it reliably diminishes my symptoms.
The old codeine-containing cough medicine, on the other hand…ugh. It made me jumpy and anxious, kept me from sleeping, and caused a sensation I can only describe as cold wind blowing through my bones. When I did manage to sleep while on it, I had horrible nightmares. I’ll take the current, codeine-free formulations, thanks.
I found this on YouTube recently, and contacted them, stating that as a retired pharmacist myself, I would love to participate in the transcription. I did hear back and was given another name, but never heard back (not yet, anyway).
Again, can’t post a direct link, but if you type “Anna Dhody shawarma” into the search bar, you’ll find it. It’s quite a treasure trove of medical history.
I’ve seen other collections of vintage prescriptions, and was quite surprised at how many of them were WRITTEN IN PENCIL.
Dangerous, and ripe for abuse, but (depending on the purpose…) undeniably effective.
I recall that in the days before doping was considered unprofessional, cyclists used various concoctions including strychnine, cocaine, heroin, caffeine, amphetamines, and various other analgesics.
im sort of curious about how much a recommended dose was …I mean a 2 tablespoon cup of Nyquil can make me drowsy …id think you didn’t take more than a 1/2 or 1 full tablespoon?
Yes. Some people do. And perhaps at some dose that’s even true. I’m dubious that 1/24th of a teaspoon of FDA -approved food coloring every month or two is a dangerous dose. I think children’s cold medicine is a lot riskier.
But you really are the first person I’ve met that has said DM works for them, and spectacularly so. Figured it must work on some people.