My mother had a little jar of a black ooze she swore by for cuts and anything she considered an ‘infection’, like pimples or ingrown hairs. Whatever – apply a dab of the stuff, cover with a bandaid (I think to keep it from staining clothes), and you’d be cured in a day or so.
It was called “Iodex”, and I think she used the same little jar of it from when she was in her 20’s on, like nearly fifty years! I remember throwing out the still not empty bottle when I cleared out her medicine cabinet after her death.
Coca Cola syrup was used ironically it seems for nausea and vomiting. As far as I recall.
My mother in law (I still miss her) used something called Numotizine? It was rubbed on your chest to hel with breathing. She had Asthma and lung damage from having Wooping Cough as a child. Aside: screw you rfk.
I remember the black salve.
I had a great great aunt who used to make it at home. Ingredients were very agricultural and included things like sheep’s tallow.
When she died in 1966 my parents found something similar in the pharmacy back then.
I am amazed to see that it is still available.
Nasty, gooey, oily stuff but I guess it works well for certain conditions.
I don’t think I will be purchasing any this side of reincarnation.
I remember kaolin-morphine suspension as a diarrhea treatment from very young days.
Oh, to my surprise I see that you can still buy this, or something called this, online. I suspect that the morphine content is almost negligible today, though?
I cleaned out some long-expired first aid kits at work a few years back. They contained smelling salts ampules, which none of my younger co-workers had ever seen outside of old movies, and weren’t certain really existed.
I remember our medicine cabinet in the 1960s contained these, along with salt tablets and iodine and mercurochrome.
Yeah, I took that a lot of a kid. When I was in the hospital for something or other, the nurses would give me 4 or 5 at a time. Thank goodness for Saint Joseph!
I used to love the orange (well, orange chalk) flavored “baby asprin”. Could have eaten them like candy. Which, of course, made them a Pretty Bad Idea.
