Imagine, you are a child living in the early 1900s and you are sick. You have a terrible cough and a sore throat which feels like it's on fire. Mum has tried various things, like lemon juice on a sugar cube, but today she bought some lozengers for you to suck which promise to make your sore throat go away quickly. You aren't sure what some of the ingredients in them are (and think perhaps you don't want to know) but if they work, you will be happy!
When I took these tins of lozengers to school, the children were enthusiastic, hoping to try the lozengers, and were completely shocked when I explained that these lozengers are actually not good for you. The lozengers, as well as other old medicines, often contain all sorts of things which are not used today, because they are often quite poisonous. This idea was very strange for the children, after all as one child said 'aren't medicines supposed to help you get better, not make you sick?' They were amazed and horrified to discover that creosote (now used to stop wood rotting) which can cause kidney failure or even death, was used in the Palmonas in the photo below. They were also amused to learn that the Ayrton's Sulphur and Yeast Tablets were essential at changes of the season and could cure impurities of the blood.
Medicine and trying to help people heal from illness, injury and disease has a very long history. Right back in ancient times, before people were even living in established towns and cities, people were trying to cure illness. The ancient Egyptians are known to have had doctors, and in fact one, Imphotep, who lived in about 2600BC was actually worshiped as a healer God after he died. The Greeks and Romans were also known for their medical men, and even today Doctors take a Hippocratic Oath, which is named after a Greek medical man, Hippocrates, who lived over 2000 years ago. Today many remember Hippocrates as the father of modern medicine.
All this history and study into why people became sick and how they could be cured didn't mean that all remedies were good for you though. By the more modern times, Patent Medicines had become popular and common, and they were produced in huge quantities in the Victorian times. Often, the remedys which were sold as 'patent medicines' were created to cure everything and anything from colds and flu to cancer, though usually these claims were not actually true. They also usually relied on exotic sounding ingredients, or the 'lore' of exotic people, like Indians. These ingredients often included substances which were toxic, poisonous and even could lead to people dying! If you would like to learn more about patent medicines, click here.
