Imagine, you are a child suffering from sinusitis. You have sore sinuses, a headache, your ears are starting to block up and, of course, your nose won't stop running! Your mother has just come home from the pharmacist with a new medicine which promises to cure you, but you aren't at all sure about it. The Penetro Inhaler sounds like a great idea, but you don't think fitting the tube up your nostrils will be comfortable at all!
When I took this Penetro Inhaler to show the children, they thought it was very bizarre. They are used to nasal sprays being used to treat drippy noses and sinus problems, but these modern nasal sprays are liquid which spray into your nose through a very thin nozzle. The Penetro Inhaler though is a metal tube which the children think is remarkably thick to be trying to put up your nose! They also thought that trying to 'suck in' the medicine when you already were having trouble breathing was a really silly idea.
Although Penetro was a medicine made in the 20th century, the basic ingredients used in the preparation, like so many old fashioned medicines, have a history almost as long as the list of ailments Penetro professed to cure. One of the basic, original ingredients in Penetro was, apparently, mutton suet. Mutton suet is the fat or lard from mutton, an older sheep. Mutton suet has a very long history as an ingredient in medicines, with even ancient recipes for cures including it. In fact, Pliny's Natural History includes a section on remedies and at least three of them include mutton suet! Other ingredients included menthol, camphor, oil of pine and even turpentine!
So, what did this amazing Penetro say it could actually do? The question is more what didn't it say it could do! According to an advertisement for Penetro I found, Penetro was marketed as a cure for just about everything, from colds and bronchitis to cuts, scratches and burns, to headaches and sprains. It even claimed to be able to cure frostbite! It also came in all sorts of different forms, from drops and syrups to the inhaler which I showed the children. As for whether it worked . . . nobody seems to know!