Saturday, March 30, 2019

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.

49 comments:

  1. If it makes you feel any better I still have my tonsils, too. Maybe god put them there to keep kids from swallowing too much chewing gum.
    You should definitely ask Walter if that's a chapstick tube in his drawers or....

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    1. "Is that a chapstick tube in your drawers.... or are you just really, really cold?"

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    2. This is what happens because I sleep in. Everybody's ALREADY having fun without me.

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    3. I still have my tonsils too. As an adult a doctor offered to remove them but I passed on his generous offer.

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    4. Yeah. I don't like when they're too eager.

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  2. According to the ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry), we are most likely to be exposed to chloroform by eating food, drinking water, and breathing indoor or outdoor air. Just so you know. This agency, like the EPA, OSHA, and others, has the authority to make recommendations to protect public health, but not to make laws. If only our civics education could catch up our public school students with these realities.

    I'm pretty sure I had a massive dose of chloroform, or it could have been its chemical cousin, halothane, when I had my tonsils out around 1959. I remember being on the table, having a mask placed over my mouth and nose, and something being poured from a brown bottle, before I lost consciousness. It's a vivid memory, even though it's only a fraction of a second long, partly because there was a nurse talking to me, telling me to imagine pretty pictures and to "Think about ballerinas." I did not like ballerinas. And now I never will.

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    1. Auugghh! I would definitely have remembered that. I didn't even like it when Old Mr. Balderson called me "young lady" as though bestowing a beloved title. Think about ballerinas? Should've been salamanders.

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    2. They told me it smelled like violets and daffodils. The bastages.

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    3. I still remember having that mask put on me in the operating room. "Ether" they called it. I remember that the lights above me seemed to spin around and I got scared. "Help! Take it off me!" I screamed. And then I passed out to awaken in my hospital room with everyone trying to ply me with iced cream. Which I passed on, as I don't care for it. Plus, I probably had very little trust in them by then. Hmmmm.... so that's where my inherent paranoia comes from....

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    4. I remember that mask and the smell. Ugh. I could conjure up the smell for years. I got even. Every time they wanted me to take a pill, I screamed bloody murder and then bit the glass straw. I wonder how they sterilized those.

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    5. I think the only non-intravenous anesthetic I ever got was...shoot--it's also called truth serum, what is it?

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    6. That's it! Oh, and "bit the glass straw" sounds like one of those bad euphemisms.

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    7. Nope. They actually had glass straws. Fewer by the time they got rid of me.

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    8. As someone who worked as a nurse aide back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the answer to the glass straw question is they sterilized them in the autoclave just like they did the glass thermometers.

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    9. I actually liked the taste of those Parke-Davis throat discs, but then I also liked the taste of Tonsilene too. Does anyone else remember that stuff? It was an astringent yellow liquid and came in a flat glass bottle with the figure of the head and neck of a giraffe imprinted on it. I'm pretty sure it had alum in it.

      They used halothane for my tonsillectomy aged seven. I remember seeing big red and blue macaws as I went under. The halothane nearly killed me as I have a gene mutation which predisposes me to malignant hyperthermia, a condition where the "thane" anesthesias cause the skeletal muscle membrane to release too much calcium, and the muscles contract uncontrollably. The contractions cause the temperature to rise as high as 107-108. Mortality rates are high. I woke up packed in ice 48 hours later, and my muscles took a long time to recover. No more "thanes" for me.

      I'm a walking genetic disaster. I don't know how I survived the patent medicines and herbal brews of my childhood.

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    10. Tonsilene I don't know. Astringent yellow liquid sounds awful. Although I might have enjoyed the giraffe. I also haven't heard of halothane. I wonder if you have a gene mutation or if they GAVE you one. Like you were an experiment! Gad. Glad you're here.

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  3. Also, there are only two countries on the planet that allow direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Us, and New Zealand. And they're trying to do something about it in NZ.

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    1. We sure didn't used to have it. I am amused by some of it, honestly. Especially the one with the guy who couldn't get the football through the tire swing until he had that pill, and then it was wham, wham, wham.

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  4. Aw, you got the good stuff-chloroform! We were a Vicks family. At some point in my adult life, I bought a new container of it and it the scent had changed. I compared the ingredients in my old jar with those in the new one---turpentine was missing. Others got cocaine and chloroform; I got turpentine.

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    1. Now I'm wondering what was in that other stuff Mom fed me--something like "percomorphum?"

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    2. For upset stomach? Syrupy, anise-like? Paregoric...camphorated tincture of opium. That stuff worked!

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    3. Ooooo! Paregoric! Yeeesss! Growing up in Virginia, it was available without a prescription --an adult just had to sign a log when purchasing. Such a miracle drug, too. I think we took it for diarrhea, too? Also, I remember Dad Downs telling us that as a little boy, he was given a serving-spoon of turpentine and black-strap molasses every spring, to 'thin out the blood'. And heck, he lived to 97 and still had all his marbles.

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    4. Never had paregoric. This sounds like real good stuff. Whatever happened to laudanum, while we're at it?

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  5. Now I'm wondering what was in the vaseline-like "salve" that my mom not only spread on my chest but also urged me to swallow. Well, I didn't die. But it might explain a few things.

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  6. P. S. Do you have Fisherman's Friend cough lozenges in the USA? My mother swears by them, although I hate the taste so much I'd never have another. Your description of those medicated throat discs reminded me of the flavour of Fisherman's Friend. Truly ugh.

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  7. Sucrets...and I still have the tin box.

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    1. Sucrets are still available, but in the new fancy tin box, not the old style, like me ;)

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  8. My granny used to “swab our throats” with some foul, red, bitter stuff every year as a preventative. Gagged me silly, then rendered me numb from teeth to tummy, and ruined my taste buds for a solid day. I would get about fifty sore throats a year, so just imagine how bad it’d have been without Granny’s Red Stuff.

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    1. You had to have that and you didn't even HAVE the sore throat yet?

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    2. Granny’s people were from Danville, VA, and they “meant business.” So, yes, we got swabbed whether we needed it or not. And who’s to say I’d not be dead today without it?

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  9. I had my tonsils out when I was three. And they grew back, but I never had a problem with them after that.

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    1. Remember? It used to be called a T & A.

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    2. T&A. Tonsils and Adenoids. Now there's a strange word I haven't heard in decades. Wonder why they didn't call the procedure an adenoidectomy. That's catchy.

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  10. I remember having a throat infection and a doctor prescribing some tablets "take two a day" Well, I had the script filled, took the things home and when I opened the box - holy cow! The damn' things were enormous! I measured them 7/8 of an inch. I'd have had difficulty without my throat being red raw. So i hit the slugs with a tack hammer and managed to get at least some of the stuff down.I think the wine was helpful!

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  11. Oh that paregoric taste was almost as bad as the diarrhea or barfing. Sometimes the taste of it made me throw up as soon as I swallowed the dose of it. My Mom tried to improve the flavor by adding a little sugar to it. When I could keep it down, it really helped and I would drift off into a nice sleep.

    It wasn't until I was in junior high school and they showed us a movie in health class about how drug addicts would put paregoric in a spoon over a flame and heat it until the point where it turned into a ball of opium!! I don't think any of us needed that much knowledge about how to make a ball of opium and can't imagine why that would be in a movie to show in school.

    We had paregoric in the cabinet at all times at home and I wondered if I could get our paregoric to turn into an opium ball if I held a spoon of it over the stove flame. I had no clue about what I would do with a ball of opium if I made one, it just looked like an interesting experiment. I never did that experiment because I knew I would get in big trouble if someone got the stomach flu and there was no paregoric left in that bottle.

    It is a wonder that so many of us baby boomer survived.

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  12. Chapstick once came in metal containers?
    I had several bouts of tonsillitis as a small child, but grew out of it when we moved away from the city, until I got it again aged about 12 or 14 and instantly remembered the particular taste of it. I eventually had the tonsils out when I was 19 but they were deeply recessed so couldn't be completely removed, which means every once in a while I still get a touch of tonsillitis.

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    1. Yes, chapstick came in metal containes. THERE DIDN'T USE TO BE PLASTIC EVERYWHERE!

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    2. When I told my granddaughter about toys of my childhood, I explained that we didn't have a lot of toys because there was no plastic yet. She asked what microwaves were made of without plastic. These kids today...

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  13. Oh, those medicated throat discs! I always carried them when I was in high-school back in the days of the dinosaurs. Used them, too. They eased a sore throat, they stopped a cough in its tracks. Then for years, I looked for them, with no luck.
    Fishermen's Friend, the original, heavy-duty variety, sort of, kind of, almost works. But nothing like those disks!

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    1. Another fan. I know I've tried Fishermen's Friend but it hadn't occurred to me to look for it recently. I'll put it on the list.

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  14. Oh, how times have changed. Never heard of any of this before. My siblings and I all still have our tonsils. Of all of my 6 kids and their 26 cousins only 1 had their tonsils out. Now you have to be on your deathbed to convince doc to perscribe an antibiotic.

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    1. Yeah, because of all those people who demanded (and got) antibiotics for a virus...

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