The first time we sneezed or coughed, out came the old mercury thermometer...to be held under your arm when you were a toddler and under your tongue when you were "a big girl." (My grandsons have something called a Fever Bug that looks like a cartoon caterpillar and sticks on their foreheads.)
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| Thermometer pinterest.com - Lynne Medsker |
Then at night the vaporizer would come out, and the smell of Vicks would hang in the warm damp air. Vicks VapoRub would also be applied generously to my chest.
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| Vicks Vapo Steam ebay.com - ourfinefinds |
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| Vaporizer hammertimeonlineauctions.com |
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| 1946 Vicks ad adclassix.com |
I always knew that my mother would give me cherry cough drops...either Smith Brothers or Ludens. I loved those things so much that they almost made it worth being sick.
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| Smith Brothers' Wild Cherry cough drops oldtimecandy.com |
Of course, a trip to the doctor for a shot of penicillin was always an option. Why did the metal version look so much more menacing than today's plastic one?
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| Old-time hypodermic needle howstuffworks.com |
If all else failed, however, my mother's potato soup was a general cure-all. She always made a big pot of it when I was sick and administered it with TLC.
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| Potato soup tasteofhome.com |
Hope you feel better Dana. The Vicks used to come out at our place when we were young too. But we had butter menthol cough drops instead. xx
ReplyDeleteButter menthol cough drops sound pretty delicious too! :)
DeleteHope your feelin better real soon! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm trying!
DeleteGet better lovely lady. The potato soup sounds like a good idea, but part of the medicinal quality is having someone else make it for you. I hope someone does.
ReplyDeleteI swear by our humidifier. We don't use it so much now the children are older, but I used to have it on nightly in winter when the boys were little. I love the eucalypt smell. Same goes for Vicks. Rub it on your feet.
I think you're right about the soup. A big part of the healing quality was the TLC.
DeleteI used a humidifier a lot when my daughter was young. Those were so much safer than those hot vaporizers with boiling water!
Get well soon, Dana, we have the flu season over here to, I'm just waiting for it! Great pictures, lots of memories there:-)
ReplyDeleteI haven't had the flu in a while (knock on wood). This is just an upper respiratory thing that hangs on for weeks. Everybody I know has it. :(
DeleteAhhh what memories. Can taste the cough drops now. Hope you are on the mend already and be glad you didn't have my mom who believed in the old fashioned cure of 'dosing' a child with Fletcher's Castoria at the first sign of a sniffle.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten all about Fletcher's Castoria...ha ha
DeleteGet well! We had that same vaporizer.
ReplyDeleteIt's a miracle all of us baby boomers weren't scalded by those things! By the time we all had kids, they were verboten!
Deletetheres a bug flying around here at the moment called the 100 day cough...nasty business that is driving everyone to drink. Vicks was the "go to" remedy when I was a kid too....and my granny would put brandy in milk and let us sip it zzzzzz.
ReplyDeletehope you feeling better soon Dana!
Allison x
That must be what's going around here too, because the cough keeps going on and on and on. I'm about ready for some brandy in milk...enough to make me not care if I'm coughing.
DeleteOh wow, what a blast from the past. I think Vicks Vaporub was the remedy for anything back then. Not been feeling well myself, I need to slather Vicks on!
ReplyDeleteGet well soon, Dana.
Sorry you're not feeling great either. I'm about to resort to Vicks. It couldn't make me feel worse, that's for sure. Hope you get better soon.
DeleteYup, I certainly remember the Vicks solution for the problem along with the humidifiers from growing up in upstate NY. Normally it was Campbells chicken soup at our place. This reminds me of our twice a year dosing of what my mother call red bug medicine. I'm still not sure what was in this and it tasted horrible! I think it may have been some kind of iron additive and I always tried to avoid my dose!
ReplyDeleteThank goodness my mother never heard of anything that would prevent chigger bites, or I'm sure we would have been dosed. During the summer, we always had red bug bites from playing outside in the grass.
Delete*Awww* You still have that nasty cold?? =( Well I hope it get's kicked to the curb quite soon. As far as I am concerned it should have been gone on New Years day. (Cause it was a new year and colds shouldn't last 2 years.) *lol*
ReplyDeleteI have a old vaporizer like the one picture in your post. AND I LOVE ME some cherry cough drops.
I'm with you. This should have been over on New Year's Day. Even cherry cough drops haven't made me feel better! :(
DeleteThere is a horrible bug going around here. Takes a few weeks for people to get over. Sorry you aren't feeling well. My mom used the Vicks. Nasty stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think this bug must be everywhere, because that sounds like what's going around here too. The symptoms hang on forever, and lots of people are getting it a second time after being sick with it for weeks the first time.
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