The Cough Drop Of My Dreams

In the 1950s, every child in America had their tonsils taken out, until I came along, and evidently I was Dr. Martin's inspiration to try leaving them in to see what happened. Dr. Martin was our family doctor. He made house calls with his black bag and called my mom "Mother." Sometimes he'd just poke his head into my bedroom and take a good sniff and then write out a prescription. What the heck, Dr. Martin is said to have opined, those tonsils must be in there for a reason. Family lore holds that Dr. Martin said mine were "as big as hamburgers" in their normal summer state. In the winter they were often a raging mess of fire and pus-pockets. Everything infectious that came down the pike landed in my tonsils, and yet no one offered to remove them for me.

I wasn't even that bothered by sore throats because I was so used to that particular kind of pain. Once, as an adult, I went in to the doctor with some sort of strepto-crud, and he sent me off with antibiotics and offered to prescribe something for the pain. I was incredulous. Pills for sore throat pain? Ridiculous. I told Dave about it when I got home, without the prescription, and he about jumped out of his chair. "You never, ever, ever refuse painkillers," he drilled into me. Just as I was known for blown-up tonsils, he was famous for having his teeth blow up deep into a Friday night on a holiday weekend.

What I did hate was the awful cough that came in after the throat started to heal up. The kind of cough you could split your head open trying to suppress, and then once you gave in it was all over, and you coughed yourself into the dry heaves. And there was one thing and one thing only that could give you a fighting chance, and that was Parke-Davis Medicated Throat Discs. Major licorice flavor, which I hated, but oh boy did they work. They were a miracle. I've tried to find them since. I Googled them. Guess what? Someone is selling them on Etsy. Not the discs, precisely, but a "Vintage Box [EMPTY]" for $12.99."

I began to suspect they are truly unavailable.

And on the box is a hint why. They contain "not more than one-half minim of chloroform."

The Food and Drug Administration evidently drew the line on that in the '70s. A minim is one-sixtieth of a fluid dram, or about three-fathomsth of a cubit. In case you were wondering.

Well, shit. Somewhere around the same time it was determined that the pharmaceutical and advertising sectors were insufficiently profitable and so then we got TV advertisements for drugs to replace the cigarette ads. Up until then doctors were presumed to be the experts on what pills we should take but now we get to help them out by asking if such and such is right for us. "How about the Pill That Starts With F?" we say, helpfully, and our grateful physicians slap their foreheads and say "Boy howdy! I'd forgotten all about that one," and off we go with our pills, and off the advertisers go with our money. And this is why we now know exactly what we're in for, with warnings about everything from death to anal seepage, and whatever's in between.

So I'm not sure why we don't get to have the good stuff anymore. The cocaine in Coca-Cola, the chloroform in throat lozenges. How bad could they be?

Also, who saves forty-year-old cough drop boxes? That degree of speculation eludes me. But not my friend Walter. I remember he saw me with a metal Chapstick container in 1973 and said "Save that! They're making them out of plastic now." I've still got it somewhere, I think.

I wonder what Walter's got in his drawers. As one does.

Staying Up For The Game

The World Series got me in front of a TV again, which is good, because I'd been falling behind in my pharmaceutical ad consumption. I can't always tell what the pharmaceuticals do, but that doesn't mean I don't need them. I loved the one a few years back about the little blue pill you can take that sharpens up your athletic ability. Before the pill, the fellow couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a football, but afterwards, man, he was just poking that baby right through the center of a swinging tire, just drilling it, wham wham wham. Hell of a pill.

So they have to mention all the side effects, too, which is how we've all learned that four hours is about the limit for having an erection, after which you should see your doctor. I don't think they mean eighteen-year-olds, who should see somebody else. The first hour of the erection is the one you're interested in, the second and third hours are for display purposes only, and then you're just sort of counting down the last hour with your doctor on speed dial. Of course, you're not going to be able to just pop in on your doctor, so you'll have to go to the emergency room. I'm thinking there is probably a way to make a grand entrance into the ER that will get you right at the head of the line and into a private room in front of the gunshot wounds and heart attacks.

They don't say what the doctor is going to do about it. The problem, as I see it, is that there is too much blood in one place, and it needs to be encouraged to go somewhere it's in short supply, such as the brain. The four-hour erection happens when the brain feels neglected and goes into a complete pout. "Don't bother sending any of that blood back up here," the brain sniffs. "I still have no idea what you were talking about with that betting system that's guaranteed to beat the casino. As far as I'm concerned, you're on your own, Big Boy, and God forbid you should read me a little Jane Austen once in a while."

I personally do not have much of a grip on the concept of the four-hour erection. I got my windshield wipers stuck in the "up" position once, and it just turned out to be a matter of loosening the nuts. But I do remember a particularly obstreperous Jeep from my early days as a letter carrier that might shed some light on this condition. It was hell getting that Jeep to start. You had to pump it for a half hour. Once it finally got going, it had an idle set to about 8,000 RPMs, and you drove it standing on the brake. Darn thing wouldn't shut off, either. You could turn it off, take the key out, walk away, and it would still be going when you came back five minutes later. What we figured out how to do was to cut the engine when it was still in drive, stomp on the gas, and then it would backfire like mad and shudder to a halt. It's worth a shot for the four-hour erection, too. So that's cut it, stomp on it and plug up your ears. I'm pretty confident about this suggestion because it's not my penis.

There's a lot of good free advice on those ads about when you should see your doctor. I generally keep my own counsel. I had some little totally unauthorized thing growing inside of me at one point that was supposed to be harmless, but which had begun to slouch against my bladder to the point that--under certain conditions--it sort of clamped down on my urine flow. I was on the horn about that to my doctor right away, and mentioned the problem, right after asking if Crestor, Spiriva, Prevacid, Levitra, Rituxan, Aredium, Actonel or Evista was right for me. She told me that it was probably all right as long as urine was still coming out, but if it shut off completely, I should get in to the hospital right away. No, really? Let me jot that down.