Kooky 'prescriptions'

Paregoric - I think that’s what Edgar Allan Poe drank a bunch of when he killed himself.

I remember Bag Balm! It was one of the souvenirs I took home from a trip to Vermont. Now I use Burts Bees, a gift from my sister that makes my hands feel like silk. She lives in North Dakota, and she knows from cold and dry.
Yeah, Bag Balm stinks of menthol. But it’s a great barrier ointment.

I remember butter for burns, and in this area 'bag balm' was put on whatever was wrong.  It was usually good for the cows whose udders got sores or chapped.
As for potatoes on burns - never tried it, but I do keep aloe plants.  Just break off part of a leaf, stalk, whatever you call that growth, and spread the inner liquid on the burn.  It works well.

Midkid  - I loved paregoric.  Mom used it on our gums when teething, but I know it was good for upset stomach or spasms.  Only a little did the trick, not like a whole pill of opium!

I've been told that spider webs have a bit of antibiotic effect if put on cut skin.  Not the kind with dust on them, like the cobwebs I sometimes have.

I haven't heard of any but this one just made me 😁 Thank you for sharing...

The only thing we use calamine lotion for is poison oak. I tried it when I came down with head to hoe hives during early pregnancy and it did not help. Nothing helped actually haha!

Barb, I’ve never heard of rubbing a freshly sliced potato on a burn! I will definitely try that the next time I burn myself in the kitchen!

NHWM, I don’t remember how long it took for my burn to heal, but I’m sure it was too long as far as I was concerned. It was the first and last time I’d been scalded.

CM, calamine lotion helped me as an anti-itch agent, for bug bites and such. And when I’d gotten a bad sunburn that was just beginning to heal, I would feel a maddening deep itch that was too painful to scratch. Calamine lotion was the only thing that quelled that itch. That, and lots of Benadryl.

My husband was given huge doses of cod liver oil as a child but just as a health-maintenance thing.
My parents gave us horrid-tasting vitamin losenzes that I would shove under the sofa as soon as mom wasn’t looking. I didn’t know how to swallow a pill, and I wasn’t about to chew that mess and swallow it. I’m sure my mom found them, but she never said anything. Maybe she tried one.

When I was about two weeks overdue with my first child, my mom insisted I drink a small bottle of cod liver oil mixed with orange juice. She promised me it would make my labor start. It didn't, but BOY, it did start three days of pure misery!!! I think it was her payback to me for the grey hair I gave her as a teenager!!

My grandson was given phenobarbitol for colic.

My Dad, who immigrated from Wales, UK used to have his Mother and Brother send him LLC lozenges over to him. These LLC lossesnges contained Licorice, Linseed, and Chloroform, also ether. He said that they helped him with his Asthma symptoms, and they probably did.

Not many of us liked the taste of them, but I Loved them, LOL, they were a little beige rectangular and flat wafer, and they would give you an exhilarating whoosh of inspiration when you sucked on them, he only gave them to us sparingly, but I would sneak them out of his drawers.

I know that he also used to find them in specialty candy shops and pharmacies up in BC Canada, before they finally took them off the market in the 80's, of course he stock piled them! Later they were repackaged into what you can now get, VICTORY LOZENGES, but they've taken the Chloroform out of them, you can get them on Amazon, but they are not the same , no more Whoosh!

My parents (for my Mom's Arthritis) used to also smuggle 222's out of Canada. We live in Seattle, so we often shopped up in Canada for the Brittish goods that you cannot find here. The 222's are a Aspirin/tylenol like product that also have Codeine in them. My Mom ate them by the handfuls, terrible, but they helped her with her arthritis pain, so you couldn't really blame her. Later she was treated with the usual narcotics, her arthritis was that bad. God Love her!

God knows if these old remedies contributed to their life ending diseases though, my Dad with PSP, and my Mom With Uterine cancer. Their parents gave them all sorts of "home remedies" when they were young. Of course that was in the 20's before modern medicine and all, I'm sure they tried everything!

Son was prescribed Merbentyl when he was seven weeks old, and four weeks in to his three month colic - I gave it to him that night, he slept for fourteen hours, and although I never ever gave it to him again I've never wanted to know what was in it.

Mind you, the state I was in by then I don't suppose I'd have cared if it was straight opium!

The best thing to rub on a burn in a freshly sliced raw potato. I forget what the science is, but it really works!

Ah--and Paregoric! we always had a huge bottle of that. Mom gave us a spoonful for all things tummy-related (and for nights when they had dinner guests).


When I found out I was taking OPIUM--well, it was super effective and that's one drug I wish you still could get. DH has horrible stomach cramps at times and Paregoric was the only thing that helped. Maybe I was just drugging him into submission :)
I have a crusty, VERY OLD bottle of calamine lotion and I know our last need for it was 30 years ago with chicken pox. I don't recall that it helped at all. I probably should toss it :)

I am not a soft drink person. I love coffee, no sugar in it. Yuck! Hate sweet coffee. That’s my vice. But there is something nice about coke if you are sick. It is soothing.

CM,

I remember calamine lotion being used on my chicken pox as a kid and I guess other skin issues. I do remember a bottle being in the medicine cabinet.

I'm actually quite relieved to hear that, Midkid.

I certainly DON'T want to hear that anyone's taken up the challenge.

On old time cures - has ANYBODY ever found calamine lotion good for anything? It's still around, and as far as I've noticed equally useless for chicken pox, sunburn, eczema or anything else it's recommended for.

Well, goodness, the chips and coke is actually a thing! We kind of wondered about the high salt content being one of the 'issues' but my friends who have chronic vertigo are all on low salt diets, so that made no sense.

My grandma used to put a big glob of Vicks on the back of dad's mouth and made him let it run down his throat to cure colds. I KNOW he got cod liver oil daily.

My MIL was insistent I swab my kids' throats with Mercurochrome!! It has MERCURY in it. Love of heaven--she did this to her own kids. I told my DH I know why he's crazy, he was ingesting heavy metals all his life. I wouldn't let her near the kids when they were sick.

I DO remember getting a mustard plaster (vaguely) administered to me by my grandmothers, I guess I had croup or something and I know it 'helped' but it was far more likely the daily shots of penicillin that cured me.

Thank you but I am pretty cautious about what I insert anywhere--so the garlic clove up the tush is not happening.

For the severe nausea during pregnancy I did take a Tablespoon of coke 'syrup', and it really helped, but so did sipping on an ice cold coke in a glass.

Oh gosh, Anonymous

You just reminded me of something awful. There was a girl at my high school that was a bit ‘off.’ Everyone knew it.

Kids are cruel. Someone told her that a girl got pregnant because a guy stuck his finger in her navel and she had to place a band-aid over her navel to protect herself. She did it!

I sat next to her in English class. She whispered in my ear that she was protected. I had no idea what she was talking about so I asked her to explain what she meant.

She told me that she was wearing a bandage over her navel and when I asked her why she told me which girls had told her that she could get pregnant if a boy stuck his finger in her navel.

I told her they lied and to take the bandage off and to speak to her mom about it after school and ask her to explain how a girl becomes pregnant.

I had a younger friend that asked if she could use vitamin D instead of birth control because she wanted to have relations with her boyfriend at the time. Me and her friends told her to go and get BC instead.

GrannieAnnie, ah yes, cod-liver oil straight from the bottle. Apparently it worked as I had perfect attendance in school from K-12. But no one wanted to sit near me [just kidding].

These things go in and out of style too. Same with these crazy studies, something goes out, then they go back to it later. Kind of like fashion! Hahaha. One day, as s teen I came home with new shoes that I bought and was all excited to show my mom. They were platform shoes. She looked at me and said, “That’s not a new style, we had those too.” Was new for me though. She said the same thing about peasant blouses. I saw the same thing with my girls. They giggled when I told them that I wore some of the same styles they did.

Okay, my girls called them low rise jeans. We called them peanut jeans. Why peanut? Hell if I know why. And the platform shoes that our kids wear are crazy looking! LOL

My daughter and I had an argument about shoes that she would wear for her confirmation. I told her, we have a big church and many kids will be confirmed. Your feet will be killing you at the end of the night. She said, no they won’t, mom. So I let her find out for herself. At the reception afterwards in the church hall all of the girls had kicked off their shoes.

Dizzy,

My word! A hot pot of tea, OUCH! Butter on your forehead. My gosh, how long before it healed?

Kat,

That’s it! It was red and I think it stained clothes if it got on them.

Grannie,

Mom takes it in capsule form! Cod liver oil in a capsule. Yep, a doctor prescribed it years ago for her.

One winter Dad swore he'd keep us cold-free and healthy with cod-liver fish oil.  a teaspoon each, straight from the bottle....horrid tasting!  We tried all sorts of stuff to get rid of the taste, but the only thing that worked was Graham Crackers.  I don't remember if we were healthy that year or not.  He never tried it again, and to this day I swear I taste cod-liver oil if I try a Graham Cracker!

I used to get ear infections all the time as a kid, and had to go to the Dr to get my eardrum pierced to let the fluid out ( its a wonder I can hear!) I hated that, and told my grandmother when my ear hurt. She would warm up some "sweet oil" and put a drop in my ear. I have no idea what " sweet oil" was, but it sure worked!! And my GGM used to try to get us kids to "eat" Vicks Vapor rub.. she even tried to hide it in our juice!

NHWM, I remember my father putting butter on my forehead when my aunt accidentally spilled a kettle of hot tea on it ( I was a kid and underfoot). I remember sitting upstairs with a shiny forehead and a keen sense of wounded dignity when the party still went on among my grownup relatives downstairs.

One of my sisters told a story from her hospital nursing days, about a doctor who had prescribed 2 cc’s of Milk of Magnesia to a constipated patient. (Two cc’s is like .07 fluid ounces.) The patient looked skeptically at the tiny plastic cup and said “I don’t think this is going to do anything!”
I don’t know how the nurses fixed it but my sister said that the doctor never admitted to his mistake.
The only wacky prescription I can remember at the moment are gin-soaked raisins for arthritis pain.

Mercurachrome

Iodine?

I remember them putting butter on a burn. That is bad. Cold water is best.

What was that red stuff they put on our cuts and scrapes? Can’t think of the name of it at the moment.

I remember way back whenever my Mom burned her hand while cooking, she would put butter on the burn spot. Now I heard that is the worse thing to do.

For myself, I just run cold water over the spot.