What medicine do you remember always having in your childhood medicine cabinet?

Kaolin and morphine, vile but did the trick
Indian brandee
Fennings little healers, not sure what they were meant to do!

Cod liver oil and milk of magnesia.

Gentian violet solution, used for mouth ulcers, cuts and grazes, now banned as deemed carcinogenic. In primary school we’d be turning up with purple knees and elbows. Those were the days when we played for hours down the back lanes on the cobbles.
Germolene, Vicks, calamine lotion as well.

Lots of the above, especially the particular smell of germolene.

Would also mention Friar’s Balsam
We used it as a steam inhalation when we had coughs and colds but the midwife advised me to paint it on when my nipple cracked whilst breastfeeding nearly 40 years ago. The crack healed overnight.

Scott’s Emulsion!

Gentian violet

Junior Disprin/aspirin (pink), Gee’s linctus, TCP, Olive oil from chemist put onto cotton wool for ear ache, Californian syrup of figs, Delrosa syrup, cod liver oil, Andrew’s liver salts, gripe water for babies’ colic, Germolene, and Milk of Magnesia.

Plus a small amount of brandy and hot water!

25Avalon

Syrup of Figs, Exlax (yuck), pink ointment.

Germolene? My mother always had aspirin and Disprin when we were children, they are seen as cures for everything, including being unable to sleep. Also Kaolin and Morph for my father when he had a bad stomach, and calamine lotion.

My generation used to get liberally coated with Calamine Lotion for any sign of a disease with spots.

We also had some disgusting stuff called TCP, which I think was for sore throats. And Vick got smeared on your chest at night so the fumes would supposedly clear a blocked nose?

fennings little healers,

My husband's mother always had Tiger Balm, the ex-pat's equivalent of Vick - another family favourite in our house. Apparently my maternal grandmother favoured goose fat on the chest, whilst my paternal grandmother liked gin (for herself!). All families used to have "poltice" too, I think, for boils. It came in a tin which you heated in a saucepan of hot water.

When she was older my mother used to gargle with TCP or, failing that, salty water if she though she was getting a cold.

Fencing’s little lung healers

Syrup of Figs (on a Friday night)
TCP (which we always referred to as Tom cat's pee)
Vick

Don't know if a medicine byt Syrup if Figs was always in the cupboard.
Castor Oil, Rosehip Syrup almost daily probably for vitamins.

Aspirin, certainly. And iodine for every cut and scrape, whether you wanted it or not. I grew up in Austria and I can still remember the smell of it.

- A dusty brown glass jar of 200? asprin,
- Jar of pink Calamine lotion (EEK!)
- Jar of Malt (Yuk, double yuk!)
- Little Haliborange vitamin C pills (Yum, I think I overdosed when they were kept behind the clock!)
- Tube of Savlon and round tin of Germolene
- Smelling salts in another brown, glass jar. Loved that smell!

Vic's Vaporub. I'm from US. This horrid ointment was rubbed on our chests almost every winter night. Supposed to keep us from getting pneumonia.

Romola

What was that nappy cream called that came in a brown glass jar?

Zinc.castor oil and friar's balsam- it disappeared when chemist's shops stopped doing their own dispensing.

We had Junior Asprin - although I remember them as b eing pink, and you were allowed to crunch them up .

I don't remember what those throat lozenges were called - they were sold in orange plastic tubes with a white and blue stopper.

We had cetavalon for cuts and scraped knees as it did not sting like iodine, and dettol was banned as my mother was allergic to it.

And tin rolls of elastoplast the horrible kind that hurt badly when it was pulled off.

TCP
Germalene, the pink stuff in a tin which was far more effective than the wussy stuff you get now in a tube
vick
Beecham pills, little rounds things which were a laxative. Never Beecham powders though, were they also a laxadive?
Plasters but we had to really need one, not for just a graze. Mowing the lawn was our mother’s cure for period pains.
That was about it, who needed anything else?

Camphorated oil rubbed on our chests when we had a cold....loved the smell of it.

Milk of magnesia

Did anyone have Fennings Feaver Cure! It was so bad it was sure to make you better!!

Quite a few of the above (which I’d forgotten about until now) but also Myrrh Tincture for mouth ulcers (stung like HELL but it worked).