What were you treated with as a poorly child at home?

Confined to bed with absolutely no heating - except perhaps a little from the fire downstairs when the door was opened briefly.

If well enough to ask to get up - it was off to school. I vividly remember the effort of walking there on wobbly legs that felt like soft sticks of licorice.

Poached egg on toast- Cod liver oil- Crushed ice and coke syrup, and they wondered why .. Oh nevermind- Milk of magnesia- Hot tea with lemon and honey- Chicken soup- Orange flavored chewable aspirin- Raw onion- Hot foot soaks with epsom salt- Salt gargle- Vicks rub- Mustard plasters ..

I don't remember any specific treatment or home remedies - just lots of warnings about airing clothes, not going out with damp hair, etc. Quite sensible really but at the time it was irritating and I didn't take much notice.

Some of the things that were prevalent when I was a child don't seem so common now. People don't seem to have colds so often, and I remember having horrible chilblains. On the other hand, many, many more people have asthma and allergies.

Chicken soup, cod liver oil - disgusting stuff, Vick rubbed on chest!

I vividly remember Milk of Magnesia - Yuk !

Calves Foot Jelly which l used to love.

Cod Liver Oil which l still love.

My grandma resorted to one of three 'medicines'. If you had a sniffle she gave you a Beecham's Powder. If you had an upset stomach she gave you bicarbonate of soda (a real kill or cure method lol) . Ff you had a cough she gave you a drag of a cigarette to 'clear your chest' and by goodness it did because you would cough and cough thereby proving that it was doing it's job .

Mam would buy us Lucozade if we were ill or lemonade mixed with boiled water.

Oh, this is a lovely thread. I remember so many. Did anyone else have Collin's Elixir for coughs? I never knew if it was a local chemists mixture. It worked brilliantly, but I have a feeling it contained morphine!

Every year I used to get bronchitis and mam used to ask the chemist to mix a Linctus. I lived on the stuff from Oct to Mar throughout my childhood.

I remember most of the mentioned medications ( a lot with horror!)
Loved pobs though.
One thing not mentioned up to now is Bile Beans....nasty little black objects, shudder.
Snow Fire for chilblains, and I had such painful chilblains (Yorkshire Winters, say no more.)
Fennings Fever Cure, in it’s Victorian looking bottle, yuk.
Indian Brandy, given when on a period ( it did help).

Two nice things about being home ill, one, a fire made up in the bedroom and two, Lucozade, a rare treat.

Syrup Minadex - an iron tonic with orange flavour. It was very sweet and tasted much nicer than most other children's medicines. I'm sure it rotted my teeth. Virol was given to 'build me up' after a nasty bout of pneumonia and I loathed it.

I like Minadex but didn't have it when I was a child, I bought some when I was pregnant.

Beef tea. Mum scraped a knife across uncooked beef and when she had enough fibres, boiled that up with a little water.

Thermogene and Camphorated oil for chests.

Benger's Food if we were really peaky, otherwise Pobs and
an egg beaten up in milk and sieved to get the nasty thick bit of the albumen out. Mum once forgot that and I was sick all over the eiderdown.

Senna pods or Syrup of Figs if we were constipated and as we got older, Petrolagar.

Germolene for cuts and grazed knees (permanent with me, a tree and wall climber). TCP - hated that smell.

Golden Eye Ointment but also, 'If you pick your nose and then touch your eye, you'll get a sty.'
Something I didn't believe until much later when my doctor auntie told me it was true.

Lucozade was too expensive but Mum made lemonade whenever the fruit was in season and added citric acid, which made it into a dilutable cordial. Yum.

At other times it was Elderberry Cordial, not considered a sovereign remedy.
Elderflower Chanpagne in summer whe the flowers were out but that wasn't medication, it was pure pleasure.
As was Virol which we had every day as a preventative.
Sometimes spread on buttered bread or toast.

Bread and milk, Bovril, Lucozade, Virol (loved this!) and my gran used to make onion porridge ( don't ask!) It wasn't porridge.

You knew you were ill if you had to stay in bed in the winter and mum lit a fire in the bedroom, such a treat, as usually the windows were completely frosted up.

I wish we could still get proper pink, greasy Germolene. It formed a nice antiseptic seal and smelled wonderful.

I remember Lucozade when I was ill and Germolene for cuts and bruises. A fire was lit in my bedroom if I was ill. My father’s mother used to stay with us sometimes and she HAD to have a largish bottle of white liquid (which she said apparently) kept her regular. She also liked sherry. When I met my future husband’s family they had specific potions - I often got tonsillitis so father in law got out a little pot and I HAD to stand still while he painted the back of my throat with this liquid on a small brush??? I met my husband when I was 19. Needless to say, I gagged when the brush hit my throat. My husband remembers being given copious amounts of Virol to build him up.

All the talk of pobbies, has brought back memories of the ?whooping cough I had. Nothing was helping me get better so one evening my mum made me drink a cup of hot milk, honey and brandy. I was as sick as a dog afterwards, everything you could possibly imagine came up. I was then tucked up into bed for the night. Next morning, my temperature was normal, I began improving and was back at school two weeks later!

It’s not a remedy I’d recommend but sometimes you do wonder if there was wisdom in the old-fashioned ways.

Heinz tomato soup.
Toast

I had forgotten the names of some of the medications on here but yes I had Bradasol for sore throat and Menthalatum which was like Vick rubbed on my chest Beechams powders and Virol malt which was lovely.My dad looked after me if I was ill as he worked night's so was home during the day.he was very gentle and would make me tomatoes sandwiches and boiled eggs and soldiers but I was not allowed out of bed if I was off school.

Remember the bread and milk when returning from the dentist after having extraction. Lucozade was another go to still like the taste of it now.

Tyrozets for a bad throat. I think they made your mouth/throat numb.

Lucozade, Milk of Magnesia, flat coke, warm olive oil in the ear.

Oh - and Vicks vaporub!

Lots of memories here, and mothers who assumed home nursing was normal. I do wonder about today’s young mothers, torn between the need to work and no experience of what used to be routine childhood illnesses because they haven’t had to endure them, and hence know little about such things. Certainly I think we and our mothers took much more in our stride because there was always someone who had seen it all before.

For me, the joy of being ill meant that my mother had to stay at home with me, and as she was a brilliant nurse I don’t recall being ill with anything but pleasure! I was always back at school at the earliest opportunity, of course.