Claire has had a terrible cold for the last few days. At her request, I went to the drug store and got some Vicks VapoRub. There are isles and isles of “medicine” at the drug store and at least hundreds, if not thousands, of “medicines.” With help from someone in the store, I was able to find the Vicks… but it wasn’t easy — I didn’t even know which “category” of remedies it belonged to.
Needless to say, when I was little, drug stores didn’t have 10,000 types of medicine… there were just a few and they all did pretty much the same thing – they “cured what ailed you.” The medicines I remember when growing up that you didn’t get from the pharmacist, were referred to as “patent medicines.” Most of these were usually in your medicine cabinet — you didn’t just go to the drug store to get them only when you got sick. I remember the one thing that my mother always had, and used for everything — Campho-Phenique. Didn’t matter if you cut your finger, fell out of a tree, or off you bike, had a headache or your stomach hurt — just rub some Compho-Phenique on it and that fixed it.
I remember so-called patent medicines being advertised on the radio all the time. They were advertised as being medical miracles for a large number of diseases and most claimed to have exotic ingredients and a lot claimed to be endorsed by various experts or celebrities. I doubt that much, if any, of that was true. Liniments were very popular and said to cure all sorts of aches and pains. A couple of them claimed to contain snake oil and they were promoted [falsely] as cure-alls. You still hear the term snake oil salesman used with questionable business dealings.
Another thing that went by the wayside a long time ago was the medicine show. Medicine shows were kind of like traveling circuses or carnivals. They offered “acts” or entertainment of various kinds usually in a trailer or a tent and almost always had a “muscle man” or some big guy that developed all those muscles by using the product they were selling. There was never an admission fee — they made all their money selling the medicine…
Some of the products I remember hearing advertised on the radio and that we had around our house were Witch Hazel, Midol, Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia, Smith Brothers Cough drops, Doan’s Pills, Bromo-Seltzer, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, BC Power, Bayer Aspirin, Hadacol, Castor Oil, Iodine, Mercurochrome and Vicks VapoRub.
There were probably others, but they don’t readily come to mind. I remember Bayer Aspirin and BC Powder were used for headaches, Carter’s Little Liver Pills supposedly cured all sorts of things not even related to the liver, of course Campho-Phenique cured pretty much everything, too. I remember that Hadacol was just “good for you.” If you cut your finger, Iodine burned like crazy, so I remember my mother using mercurochrome instead — I don’t know if it helped, but it turned your skin a bright red for a long time.
Anyhow, some of these remedies, like Vicks VapoRub, are still around — a lot, probably most, are not. I can’t say they were good or bad, but I survived without the 10,000 drugs available today — and — I must say, my body felt a lot better back then than it does today.
And don’t go bringing up that “age” argument…..
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