Tavernoftheseas

Medicine works best if it has that awful taste

MY RECENT comments about Lennon’s Dutch medicines brought a handful of nostalgic memories from readers who remembered being treated with Witdulsies, Kraamdruppels or Duiwelsdrek in their youth.

In one MMS, the writer said he had been “cured” of nausea by his mother’s administering Behoedmiddel. He says she had great faith in Behoedmiddel and he has never forgotten the taste.

I think that was one of the ways in which those old medicines worked. They tasted so dreadful that you just didn’t dare go back for a second dose.

At boarding school our matron had two large bottles of medicine – one for coughs and cold and the other for more or less anything else, I don’t think she was in any way medically qualified.

I suspect she inherited those bottle from a long line of previous matrons, together with the keys of the linen cupboards. If we had anything really serious wrong with us we were sent to the school sanatorium for proper treatment.

Matron’s medicines were truly nasty. I think her cold remedy consisted mainly of ether. After taking a spoonful you burped eye-wateringly pungent ether bubbles for hours.

Frankly, coughing was pleasanter, so we didn’t go back and I suppose matron thought she’d cured us.

The tummy medicine consisted of a chalky white slime. You really didn’t want a second dose! That was a feature of many of those old medicines. They tasted horrible. Today they make medicines taste like cooldrink or peppermints. I think there was some vague belief that if it tasted pleasant it couldn’t be doing you any good. There was an excellent cough mixture called Borstol which was truly unpleasant, but it worked. They still make Borstol today, but they’ve made it taste quite nice and I’m sure it’s not as effective as that old stuff.

It’s a strange human trait, this need to brag about the terrible procedures you’ve been through at the hands of your doctors. Go to any doctors’ waiting room and you’ll hear any number of dire stories about operations and close encounters with death by scalpel.

Even the famous diarist, Samuel Pepys, dates much of his life from the time he was “cut for the stone”. (And it must have been a horrible ordeal without the benefit of anaesthetics).

There was an excellent doctor in Noupoort who was renowned for his amazing cure-all injections.

They hurt like hell and he uses a very long needle but they really do work fast!

It was only much later that the good doctor confessed he gave injections of distilled water whenever he prescribed medicine that didn’t taste bad. It did no harm and the patients felt they were getting good value – serious treatment. The patients’ minds did the rest. Last Laugh A man and a woman were sitting in a restaurant when the man slowly started sliding under the table. The woman appeared not to notice.

A concerned waitress came across and said to the woman: “Do you know your husband has just slid down under the table?”

“No,” said the woman coldly, “my husband has just walked in through the door.”