Wright's coal tar vapourisers

Probably capsicum

Thermogene was warming but I don't think it burned; however, the blistering kaolin poultices were a form of torture, however well intentioned.

I used to get bronchitis every winter (at the time we never connected it to my father's chain smoking!) and out would come the coal tar vapouriser. I loved everything about it, the smell, the flickering light on the ceiling and the way the little night light could burn nearly all night. My mother used a three prong attack and I was rubbed with Vicks and had antibiotics from the doctor. Even 60 years ago the doctor was warning that it would be dangerous to use them too much!

Oooh Anno, I remember Thermogene too, I seem to think it burnt my chest!

Or maybe it was just uncomfortable and I'm just a drama queen

I often had Thermogene wadding on my chest as a child. It was a pinkish colour and felt like cotton wool, smelt a bit like Vick.

Just got back to this one, as I have just used the last of the fluid in our very old vapouriser, and the other half now has a really bad cough (and of course is really really ILL!), so resorting to Vick in which I am a great beleiver (not so the other half - he can't be bothered). As a child my mother used Musterole on my chest if I had a cold. I hated it, it smelt awful and nearly choked me, not sure if that is still on the market - must Google - anyone else have memories of that. Shall we have a petition - BRING BACK WRIGHTS COAL TAR VAPOURISERS!

When my two were young we lived on a new estate with other young families and we all had Coal Tar Vapourisers and they would be loaned out to each other when more than one child was ill in the family.I am sure they enabled many parents to have a peaceful night as they were so effective. It was a sad day when the fluid and the blocks which held it were no longer available

Wrights vapourisers were brilliant and helped my three children when they had colds or coughs. They stood in a saucer of water and yes, I'm sure it was elfnsafety that saw them off.

I seem to remember we called it Vick, but it was Vicks in the US, so eventually and inevitably we now call it Vicks too.

I love Vicks; I too was rubbed with it, inhaled it etc, and now, if I have a cold or cough, I still use it. AND, one of you said it was good for fungal nails too, and you know what? It is!

Hi, I just googled Wrights Coal Tar vaporiser to see if they're still available & was disappointed to find they'not!!! Then i found Gransnet and all the people who remember them !!! Like other members I too have got the cough/cold & ent infections, what a pain, literally. So I dusted off my ancient vaporiser & a bottle with some fluid & set it up and am using it once again, hope it works. I used one as a child (loved the flickering light) and also used it when my children were little. I'm sure they made an 'electric' model to do away with the night-light or am I wrong?? Loved all the nostalgic notes, thank you x.

It took four doctors to diagnose it. DGD has been ill on and off for three weeks. Finally the rash came out. There are so many children around here that haven't been vaccinated that it's ripping through her nursery and lower school.

Hopefully the vaccinated ones will have some immunity even if not 100%.
There are little nuclei of unprotected kids in some areas - unfortunately Steiner schools seem to act like magnets for anti-vaccination parents and then the unvaccinated are in a group together. Which is much worse than if they were spread around evenly - because as soon as one gets it, they all do.

I always understood that the point of blanket vaccination was to eradicate exactly what Orca's GS is experiencing - catching whatever from a mass outbreak. If everybody had the vaccinations, the diseases wouldn't get the chance to take hold so you are not merely protecting yourself/child/ GC - you are protecting the wider community, aren't you? Sympathies to the little GC with measles, before the days of vaccination it could be very serious indeed.

I don't remember Coal Tar at all. I was a Vicks Child! I spent most of my childhood with Vicks up my nose, on my chest, and sitting over a bowl of hot water and Vicks with a towel over my head!
Oh, and sometimes I was given a teaspoon of it to melt down my throat!

I hated it surprisingly but I still use it now when I go to bed with a cold.

My GS has measles too. He's just back from a visit last weekend to NE England where there's an outbreak. He had the MMR and the booster.

I used to use friars balsam or vap menth et eucalypt!

Road tar!

I still want to know. Did the vapouriser smell like Jeyes fluid or road tar?

yup rheumatic fever is a complication of "strep throat" where the bacteria migrate to the joints and heart. It is still fairly common in NZ I was shocked to learn - I think Maori and south pacific groups who do not tend to take kids to GPs
That is unusual to get measles after a vaccination vampire but they do not always fully "take" in every child. Poor little thing.

I was part of the pilot for mass polio vaccination. Mum said the queues were so long because every mother in the area was so keen to protect their children.

DGD has measles atm. She was vaccinated so it's not as bad as it could have been. She's still poorly though.

I agree we should not diss the drugs, but when my daughter kept getting tonsillitis time after time, even though she was given antibiotics, I decided that the best thing to do was to keep her indoors in the warm until the attack went - this took longer than using the antibiotics, but she never had another attack. However, the doctor was really cross with me about this, because he said there was a side effect to tonsillitis - rheumatic fever - which as he pointed out is really serious. We were obvously lucky, and I am not anti drugs, but I do think we sometimes need to build up our own immunity - just wish this really awful cough/cold I have would decide it's had enough of living with me.

My aunt had polio when she was three, she died last March aged 97 having outlived her younger brothers and sisters.
DS was not vaccinated when he was a child because of his eczema. I was told that the risk from the vaccination was greater than the risk of infection, I always wondered about that. Needless to say he caught measles.

Talking of childhood diseases, did anyone watch Mary Berry talking about having polio at the age of 13? Pre vaccination our parents must have been frantic every time there was an outbreak. I remember getting the vaccination on a sugar lump but didn't realise how serious polio was until I was much older and read a magazine showing rows of children in iron lungs.

Many memories of the wrights vaporiser and being up all night with poorly children had both ill at same time with whooping cough we had been advised not to have them vaccinated as my first daughter died from brain damage and was having fits so was advice was followed a horrific few months followed and ours was in constant use and for years after when the snotty nose started can still smell it xx

yes very different *harrigran8, image of the day really, taking the sick children out to smell the tar in the hope that it would make them better. Sad that children had such poor health in those days. The people who don't get their children vaccinated don't realise how horrible it was and how many children died of those childhood diseases or had their health damaged for ever.