Cough Mixture

A lemonade of gum arabic and sugar candy, carrying an ounce of opium tincture.

From: The Home Cook Book
Published: 1887
Yikes Scale: Call poison control

Exactly as printed, 1887

Mrs. C. Patterson.

Two ounces of gum arabic, one ounce of paregoric elixir, two ounces of sugar candy, juice of one lemon; mix with six glasses of hot water. One wineglass to be taken morning, noon, and night.

The Home Cook Book, 1887. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Paregoric is camphorated tincture of opium, containing morphine. An ounce of it is spread across six glasses of lemonade, and the instruction is a wineglass three times a day.

There is no distinction by age or weight anywhere in the recipe. A Victorian wineglass held roughly two fluid ounces, and the same measure is offered to everyone in the house.

Notes from the 21st century

Opioids do suppress cough. Genuinely and effectively — codeine still does. The problem is dose control, not mechanism.
Gum arabic is the soothing part. A demulcent that coats the throat. With the lemon and sugar it is a perfectly good cough syrup on its own.
Contributed by a reader. Mrs. C. Patterson, in a charity compilation. Home medicine circulated the same way recipes did.

Also in this book

Brine That Preserves Butter' a Year — Butter kept twelve months under a salt brine strong enough to float an egg.
Gardner (Cholera Remedy &c.) — Laudanum, capsicum, camphor and spirits of nitre — two to ten drops for children, every fifteen minutes.
Ginger Liqueur — Five ounces of bitter almonds, cold-steeped six days in a gallon of whiskey.

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