Past in Perspective
“The Remedy is worse than the disease.”
–Francis Bacon
We have surely come a long way, partly as the sperm that won and partly because our ancestors having survived their era, to have us here for this one. We do currently go through this agitation that our ancestors have lived in easier and simpler times than what we face now and we also feel they were somehow privileged because of that. Coming to the argument with agreement over the fact that times were definitely simpler, yet not a piece of cake to survive in, I bring into your notice a basic necessity in the form of a cough syrup.
This particular cough syrup is from about 100 years ago, nurtured from a number of ingredients including Alcohol, Marijuana, Chloroform, Morphia (morphine). As if the ingredients are not enough to garner suspicion, the peculiar part however is that it’s called the ‘One Night’ syrup and I think the composition pretty much sums up the reason because after a sip of this it’ll only be one night, literally. With a dosage of 3 teaspoons a day prescribed with lots of sleeping this syrup would heal the cold that’s bothering you, although I don’t think sleeping would be a problem with these ingredients and which is why the syrup was banned in 1934.
After learning about this medicine I come to the following dilemma that, if this is what they had for curing a cough, it makes me wonder what they had for more severe fevers and infections. So, who would want to take a swig from this and experience the past era?