bags of 100 Aspirin

My father always had a brown bottle with codeine tablets in his pocket. If I had the start of flu or a bad cold he would cut one tablet into quarters and give me one quarter when I was 9 or 10. At senior school I was allowed a half of a tablet. Only ever once at the start of each illness/ stomach ache/headache. Pretty sure you could buy them over the counter in the 50s 60s.

The mention of Beecham’s powders reminds me of a Saturday job I had in the late 50’s. The shop owner sold the Beecham’s powders as single sachets from the pack of 5. It puzzled me why a customer wouldn’t just by the pack of 5 rather than paying the marked up price of a single.

One particular man used to come in every Saturday morning looking the worse for wear and reeking of stale alcohol and buy a single Beecham’s powder for his hangover.

I remember my mum buying Dr Collins Browns medicine which I think was for tummy upsets. Originally it contained morphine I think

Supernana1 you are not alone. Not me but my older sister said she liked the “sour” taste.
I kind of get it, because I used to pinch bits of the fresh yeast I was sent to get on the way back from the grocery shop!
Strange days indeed.
Yet we are still here🤗

I was born in 1946. As a child my mother would send me to the chemist down the road with a brown glass bottle, to buy sixpence worth of Syrup of Figs (for constipation) or Hippo Wine & Squills (for a cough). I loved the taste of both, so would take a good slug from the bottle and fill it up with water. Luckily, my mother never realised what I was doing.

At age 15, working in a small business, I passed a small shop each day that sold aspirin in small glass tubes with a cork in the top. I somehow discovered that I liked the taste of the aspirin, so I bought a tube each day and ate them like sweets. This went on for months.

How I didn't kill myself I don't know. I think my grown-up children think I'm making it all up, but it's true.

I regularly buy soluble paracetamol x 100. Available online.

I remember Mum shoving the disgusting Beechams Powders down us.
I vaguely remember aspirin in a brown plastic bottle.

The morphine didn’t help with my tummy aches which were mostly caused by constipation!!

I can remember as a child that one could but kaolin and morphine for tummy aches. We always had some in the medicine cupboard at home.

JamesandJon33

Clearing my aunt’s house we found 5000 paracetamol tablets. The doctor kept prescribing them but she didn’t take them. Two carrier bags full went back to the pharmacy .

What an absolute waste, even if they are ‘cheap’. Whoever was in charge of ordering her repeat prescriptions should have been aware of this, and stopped reordering them.

I do wonder how much medication is wasted by people, often elderly ones.

Cannot help feeling if some charge were made, it wouldn’t happen so much.

We don’t value things that we don’t have to pay for.

At home alone, I have occasionally had to resort to using a knife tip to get the foil off!

The foil can be sharp, too, madeleine, I've given myself a cut trying to prise tablets out of the pack.

Calamine can also come in a nice ointment now, too.

I don't remember a pink gungy liquid to drink.

Don’t get me started on the daily dose of Cod Liver Oil! What was that for?

Vitamins D, A and fatty acids. After WW2 rationing continued and cod liver oil was issued at clinics for children. Many children now are low in vitamin D so a daily cod liver oil tablet might be a good idea.

I've just started taking them again.

BlueBelle

Luminance it’s not sensible as you can walk round a pharmacy and buy your two packets walk round again and buy two more then walk into the next pharmacy and buy more

You can't do it on the spur of the moment, which you could. If you had a bottle with 98 still in it. That's why they are in blister packs, so you can't pour out a handful
Paracetamol poisoning isn't immediately obvious and often by the time someone seeks help it's too late, the damage is done

Yes. I have a green kit box in the flat and another in the car. When we had the boat had another one on there too, but that was checked over every month as it was damper on the boat especially out at sea so it was best to check it over. That also had a longer bandage and we knew which bit of wood we could use for a splint and of course the ubiquitous bungy cords were plentiful if we needed to join things up. You had to think of what you might need to use in an emergency as you were only doing about 4 miles an hour,

I used to do hospital car as a volunteer 3 days a week for 10 years. So of course , we were not expected to do anything medical but I did have extra simple things, sick bowls, plenty of new boxes of tissues - had one patient who often had quite a bad nose bleed with very little notice . Then always had a couple of sparkling water bottles unopened. These were very worth carrying for several things. Anyone feeling nauseous, needing to take some medication on the journey, a quick refreshing drink, clean at hand water to wash any grazes or whatever, and (I never needed it) spare water for windscreens or radiator.

Remembered from my youth was that awful pale pink gungy thick horrible tasting medicine which we seemed to get for all sorts of childhood illness and of course the other pink stuff was that bottle of calamine lotion for bites etc. I think most of the medicinesand tablets were in bottles in those days rather than in these pill packs. They are of course hygenic and easy to carry around but not so easy if your hands are not good to get the darn things out!! At home alone, I have occasionally had to resort to using a knife tip to get the foil off!

I used to get Paracetamol prescribed by the doctor as I needed 8 per day to stay on top of severe rheumatoid arthritis pain. It used to annoy me because I could afford to pay for them as you can get them very cheaply but are limited to 32 at a time and I used to feel like an addict going to our only chemist in town daily to get enough for holidays etc even dragging friends and family along! Apparently it costs millions yearly to prescribe on NHS. I think a card issued by a GP stating how many you are allowed would cut down this bill. The NHS pay a lot more for the bulk buy than the cheap ones in the shop.
I love the smell of Germolene and do you remember the calomine lotion in the summer for sunburn. Don’t get me started on the daily dose of Cod Liver Oil! What was that for?

We also had bottles of aspirin and junior dispirin in the cupboard as well as bottles milk of magnesia and morphine and kaolin. Slightly different contents these days.

My dogs have their own first aid kit which I assembled into a see-through back pack.

Sago

I have a comprehensive first aid box, I’m sure I could do minor surgery!

I did once fix up my Labrador’s split ear with anti bacterial swabs, skin glue and steristrips.

I used to love the smell of germolene in the little tin.

20 years ago we painted our kitchen “ointment pink”

I still live the smell of Germolene. I thought it was just me.

I think it smells like love and comfort.

Allira

Yes, we've got a First Aid box but other things, like a sling, knee support, etc are all over the place.

We like Germolene antiseptic cream but it's increasingly difficult to find. None on the shelves in our Boots.

Germolene can be found on Amazon for a very low price.

Granmarderby10

Aspirin in a glass bottle with cotton wool stuffed in the neck. Don’t know why!

Before pills were routinely coated in a shiny layer the cotton wool helped to prevent breakage.

I remember huge jars of Aspirin (250 tablets?) - they had one at work which was locked away so they couldn't be accessed without supervision, but then we had get the tablets out ourselves so that work wasn't responsible for how many we took. It was something to do with employers' responsibility (this was the late 80s early 90s)

The maddest thing was that after the 16 tablets in a packet rule came in, you often weren't allowed to buy more than two packets in one go. I was actually prescribed 6 tablets a day by my GP, but told to buy them from a supermarket as it would be cheaper for me to get a generic type than a scrip. In order to buy a month's worth (which was what was prescribed) I had to go in and out of the supermarket and choose different checkouts to get what I needed in one trip (the nearest supermarket was ages from where I lived)

Clearing my aunt’s house we found 5000 paracetamol tablets. The doctor kept prescribing them but she didn’t take them. Two carrier bags full went back to the pharmacy .

Allira

I remember Beecham's Powders, mixed with water in a little tumbler. They contained aspirin and caffeine, probably not good for children at all.

We used to sell them at my aunt’s café, and we also used to sell a small round cardboard box. I think it was shiny and they were liver pills!

I remember Andrew’s Liver Salts but always preferred Eno’s for indigestion. I have a jar in the coffee cupboard but me and OH rarely use it due to taking omeprazole for indigestion.
Mum was mad about germolene and I have some in the medicine cabinet. I never take paracetamol because of the risks and do wonder why it is pushed by the doctors so much. When mum broke her hip she was told to swallow paracetamol and pretended to whilst the nurse waited. As soon as the nurse left she spit it into a tissue and placed it in her dressing gown. When I visited from 200 miles away she gave me the tissue and asked me to destroy it and get her home a.s.a.p.

I remember junior aspirin being sold in bottles of 100 .( Cotton wool in the top) my brother climbed up to reach them when he was 3yrs old, and took them all ! ( they were delicious, orangy ) several days in hospital followed once my mum realised what he'd done! .

My mother suffered from very severe headaches (not migraine) and kept a little glass bottle of 50;or 100 codeine tablets. And yes, it was brown with the cotton wool stopper to stop the pills rattling around.

I brought such a bottle with me when I came to Germany permanently in 1976. A friend of DH who is a pharmacist noticed it when he helped us move into our first flat and was amazed that they were freely available.