The horrible taste of many of the medicines we were forced to take. It seemed to me that the rule was the worse it tasted, the more effective! High on this list was Easton's Syrup, a 'tonic' we were given in the Spring and Brimstone and Treacle which 'thinned' the blood, allegedly a good thing! As soon as you got an itchy heat spot out it came. Funny thing is I haven't seen a heat spot for years..... I wonder if they were flea bites.......
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
In hot weather like this the gas tar which bound most road surfaces and was poured between the setts in the road used to melt. Roads that had been tarred and chipped had to have limestone dust spread on them to stop the tar sticking to car tyres. This was true even as late as 1976. Earlier than that, we used to harvest tar from between the setts and use it like Plasticine with the inevitable consequence that our hands got covered with it. The only remedy was to rub lard into your skin, that dissolved it. I can remember how annoyed my mother used to get!
An unusually small tar boiler. These were a common sight.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
No matter how bad things got, mother always made sure we had a clean handkerchief each day. There was a lot of coughing and spitting in the street and on public transport then. And I mean serious gobs of phlegm!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I can remember having to be given penicillin as a young child but I rejected the capsule - I'd never seen one before and it didn't look safe to eat to my young eyes. So Mum opened capsules and mixed the powder with something sweet and gave it me on a spoon. That worked!
Nullius in verba: On the word of no one (Motto of the Royal Society)
The first penicillin I had was in about 1960 and that was on grease soaked gauze as a dressing on a stubborn cut that refused to heal, it worked like magic!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Hard luck Moh. One of my friends is allergic to Penicillin and gets the same symptoms.
Another area where the war brought medicine forward was burn treatment. The only thing that was done when I was a lad was to smear a burn with butter. It's a wonder we didn't all get blood poisoning!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!