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Don't Cook That

The Family Medicine Shelf

The everyday remedies every household should keep in: calomel, paregoric, sulphonal.

From
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book
Published
1914
Yikes Scale
Call poison control

Exactly as printed, 1914

Occasionally, a room is situated so that it is almost impossible to let the air sweep through it as it ought without blowing on the patient. Arrange a little tent by placing around the invalid a low clotheshorse with three panels. Over this spread a sheet or blanket. If the air is very cold, put a hot bottle at the feet and cover the lower part of the body with extra clothing. In this way there will be no danger of the patient catching cold.

The Medicine Closet. - Even in the household where every member is strong and healthy, there ought to be in reserve all sorts of simple medicines and emergency requirements, which are ready at the moment needed. The medicine closet should be high enough to be out of the reach of children's hands. If made of wood, enamel it white inside and out, thus making it very easy to keep clean. Put a secure lock on the door and keep the key where it can be found instantly by anyone in the household. Divide the shelves into different departments for all sorts of needs. In one side store everything that is poisonous, or in any way dangerous. In another, keep rolls of antiseptic gauze, absorbent cotton, sterilized linen, bags for poultices, lint, surgeon's plaster, finger stalls, rubber bandages, and court-plaster. Reserve one shelf for such common, everyday remedies as calomel, camphor, castor oil, cascara sagrada, Epsom salts, Jamaica ginger, glycerin, paregoric, ipecac, limewater, magnesia, sweet spirits of niter, oil of peppermint, quinine, rhubarb, senna, sulphonal, flowers of sulphur. Upon another keep such drugs as are used for cleansing wounds or bruises and healing burns, also things to be used in cases of emergency, as alcohol, boracic acid, alum, carbolic acid, arnica, borax, charcoal, collodion, witch-hazel, WHAT THE HOME NURSE OUGHT TO W 1133 iodoform, turpentine, dioxygen, listerine, and peroxide. There ought to be a corner for poultice and plaster necessities. There one would find mustard, flaxseed, oil silk, bran, linseed meal, and antiphlogistine. Here, too, have small supplies kept together of such things as might have to be looked for in different parts of the house: carbonate of soda, ammonia, whisky and brandy, olive oil, sweet oil, camphorated oil, limewater, and oil liniment.


Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book, 1914. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Three genuinely dangerous drugs on a list that also contains bandages and bicarbonate. Calomel is mercury, paregoric is opium, and sulphonal is a hypnotic that accumulates and was implicated in a number of deaths.

None of this was illicit. It is a household reference telling a reader what to buy at the druggist, and everything on the list was over the counter.

Notes from the 21st century

  • Sulphonal has a specific history. Introduced in 1888 as a sleeping draught, it was withdrawn after cumulative poisoning and porphyria-like reactions were recognised.
  • The shelf was the doctor. For rural households a physician was hours away. These chapters exist because self-medication was not a choice.
  • Sickroom advice on the same page is good. Its instructions on ventilating a sickroom without draughting the patient are sensible and would pass today.

Also in this book

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