You get to go to a top apothecary in 1900--what do you buy?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The year is 1900. You get to go to the best apothecary in the United States with $100 in cash (i.e., you can buy a bunch of anything you want). What do you get?

Keep in mind, there are no drug laws on the books back then. Some stuff you could buy:

• Top-grade marijuana, presumably.
• Pharmaceutical-grade cocaine, presumably.
• Literal brand-name Heroin made by Bayer.

I’m no drug-user (straight edge, in fact), but I would like to buy two types of opiates: laudanum and paregoric, which have stupidly been eliminated from the home medicine cabinet in the US and elsewhere. Laudanum would be a highly useful painkiller, cough medicine, and anti-diarrhea medicine, whereas paregoric would be a highly useful cough and cold remedy.

I would also check out their perfumes, essential oils, and soaps. I’d probably see a bunch of other useful things–what do you think they might be? What would you buy?

2

Aspirin has just come on the market (1899)

3

True! Also by Bayer. I probably wouldn’t buy that, however, since of course it’s still available.

(The idea is that you can take what you buy back to the present day…)

4

I’m not so sure about the top grade marijuana. I’ve read repeatedly that the marijuana of today is a lot more potent then it was in the 1960’s (due to improvements in cultivation), so I imagine that marijuana of 1900 would, at best, be the “dirt weed” that today’s discerning stoner would look down upon. (That is, presuming it is even found at a U.S. store).

I would probably sample the Coca-Cola, if only to see what type of buzz a real cocaine infused drink would provide.

5

Would you actually find top grade marijuana? I had the impression that it was mostly smoked by blacks at the time, which is why the authorities got away with making it illegal. Had the Carnegies and other wealthy and powerful people known about it, MJ would likely be about as legal as alcohol is today.

6

I’m kinda boring; I’d just break the $100 bill and get 5 $20 Gold Double Eagles, hopefully in pretty good condition. They’re worth a pretty penny now.

7

I will happily trade you a few pretty pennies for those gold eagles.

8

Furniture. I’d buy some apothecary cabinets. Hell, marijuana, coke, and heroin I can buy back home.

9

Nothing. I will have taken my $100 and run to an opium den.

10

You’re fighting the hypothetical. I would assume walking out the drugstore puts you back in the present.

11

And there goes the change from your $100, your time-travel device :eek: your watch or jewelry, and everything else you’ve got that looks valuable to the proprietor of the opium den. :smack:

12

Then you smoke the opium in the store.

13

Has Phenylpropanolamine been invented yet? Could I bring the pharmacist instructions for how to make it? Damn, I miss that stuff. Only decongestant ever worked with a darn, and they had to ban it for a few strokes. Bah, humbug.

14

Surely the good peeps of the SDMB have some ideas?

15

Silver dollars out of their cash register. Maybe they have some mint postage stamps lying around.

16

This would be before the Pure Food and Drug Act - how sure am I that I am getting what it says on the label?

Regards
Shodan

17

Presumably the best apothecary would be wary of impure drugs.

18

Hashish

I’ve never heard of paregoric being used as a cough medicine; would it be effective as such?

19

Was Hexachlorophene available at the time?

20

Nope. Synthesized in the 1940s.

I’m curious, what do you want it for? Got someone you really hate?