Medical Practicioners of Old

[kyboots]

40 years people were smart enough not to drink or bathe in mercurochrome or iodine. Sad state on modern intelligence! ---John

 

[W-D Forties]

In the UK pregnant women were prescribed Guiness or stout for iron. A friend of ours who has worked in hospitals, inc mental hospitals, told me recently that they used to do the same in mental wards on the full moon to calm the patients!

Why can't I get booze on prescription, surley I must have something that would benefit from a dose?

 

[Chas]

I've been working in Psychiatric Units and Long Term Care for about 20+ years - when I first started in the biz it was not at all uncommon to see a jug of Sherry in the medication room. Quite a few of the oldsters liked it and it was as effective as an ativan. Probably better for them, too. It was also effective as an appetite stimulant. Not sure if it is still done - my feeling is probably not. The PC crowd pretty much run health care these days, and there are a lot of busybody morons running around trying to fix things that don't need fixing, like forcing old folks to try to quit smoking. My feeling is that if you've made it to 80+ you can smoke or drink whatever the hell you like. You've earned it.

I recall that it was fairly common to preform appendectomies prophylactically (meaning, just in case), as were tonsillectomies and to have adenoids removed. That was done to me, and I wasn't all that young- I think I was 12 at the time, which would put it at 1975.

There is ample evidence that a glass of wine every now and then will NOT cause F.A.S. (fetal alcohol syndrome) you have to hit the juice pretty regular and pretty hard to have a baby with it. The problem is, everybody else will freak out if they see a pregnant woman with a glass of wine. People are pretty brainwashed on this - in some ways in our PC world a woman ceases to be the owner of her own body when she's preggers.

I recall Gentian Violet pretty well - mum had some ancient bottles of it in the medicine cabinet that I'm pretty sure dated back to the 1950's. Mum almost NEVER threw old stuff from the medicine cabinet out- prob. because she was a product of the depression and that was well before universal health care in Canada. Medicines were darned expensive. I recall lots of aspirin, oil of cloves for toothaches (still in favor) and some other stuff that I still see in drug stores.

 

[Puzzicato]

In the UK pregnant women were prescribed Guiness or stout for iron. A friend of ours who has worked in hospitals, inc mental hospitals, told me recently that they used to do the same in mental wards on the full moon to calm the patients!

Why can't I get booze on prescription, surley I must have something that would benefit from a dose?

Instead of school milk there should be an office red wine run - keep up the lovely antioxidants!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Gentian Violet was a particular horror of my childhood -- having your tongue painted was a particularly upsetting experience and the taste made it even worse.

Another gentian-based preparation some might remember in terror is Father John's Medicine, a cold medicine/cough syrup product that had a picture of a stern, glowering priest on the label. My mother was a big believer in patent medicine, and Father John and Fletcher's Castoria were never far away.

 

[Jaguar66]

My grandfather was the Mayor of the capital of Kentucky, Frankfort, Ky (in the late 20s, & 30s) and also the family doctor in town. He delivered most of the babies in the town for 20-30 (30s-50s) years, and never sent a bill to anyone. My dad says he would collect by walking downtown on Saturday nite, and people would come out, and say "Hey, Doc, I owe you for this or that", and pay him off in goods, or whatever they could afford. My dad (who also was a physician, as myself), says the family was never in need of anything. They could do a movie on this guy. I knew him as a boy, he passed away in the mid 50s. He was voted the 2nd most influential citizen of Frankfort during the 20th century. My older brother married a girl from Frankfort, and some years later they looked at her birth certificate, and my grandfather was the delivering doctor.

 

[Lincsong]

When my Mother's family moved to California in 1946 the family had spent most of their money on buying and furnishing the house, cash in those days. Well, my Grandmother was diagnosed with a tumor and it had to be removed. The doctor in town was a young man whose wife was the nurse/receptionist and they were just starting out in his practice and starting a family. So the doctor performed the surgery in exchange that my Grandmother work as their housekeeper for a couple years. The doctor was our family physician for 30 years. In those days "General Practioner" meant just that; colds, aches, surgery, delivering babies. He stopped delivering babies in the early 60's but when my Mother was pregnant with me in 1968 he made an exception since he had delivered the other 4 children. I was the last boy he delivered. His daughter was also pregnant at the time and her daughter was the last girl he delivered.

 

[RadioWave]

From 1909:

 

[Gracie Lee]

Oh, don't get me started on old methods of pest control... I wrote a rather large thesis paper on it last semester, and the things I found out were horrifying.

 

[Shangas]

RADIUM spray??

Last time I checked, wasn't that stuff extremely extremely ultra dangerous? In large doses that stuff causes cancer, I believe. They used to put radium paint on watch-dials and clock-faces and hands to make them glow in the dark...

 

[Miss Golightly]

Does anyone remember having to take a tonic as a child called Radiomulsion? It tasted a little like lemon curd and came in a large brown glass bottle - I think it was discontinued many years ago - I LOVED the stuff!

 

[Big Man]

I've been working in Psychiatric Units and Long Term Care for about 20+ years ... The PC crowd pretty much run health care these days, and there are a lot of busybody morons running around trying to fix things that don't need fixing ...

I worked at a State psychiatric hospital for 30 years (been retired for two years now - thank goodness). I would most certainly agree with you on your observations about the morons trying to "fix" things. I don't know about other states, but mental health care in NC has taken a giant step backward over the past several years. Well, that's not exactly true - there was BETTER care being given years ago than is now.

 

[Big Man]

On the subject of mental hospitals, I have a pre-golden age story to tell. Both my grandparents (before they married) worked at the "State Hospital at Morganton" just after the Spanish American War. When I took a job there in 1979, my grandmother told me to "be careful, as the boys there [employees] would try to play tricks on me" as a new employee. She said that when my grandfather first went to work at the hospital they told him there wasn't a room available for him (the staff then was required to live at the hospital) and that he would have to "sleep in the dead room" (morgue) till a room opened up. According to my grandmother, my grandfather was one who could play along with a joke, so he took his things and went to the morgue and made a bed. He told the boys that were trying to play a joke on him that he "had been in the Army and had slept beside plenty of dead people during the war." My grandmother said that they never tried to play another joke on him after that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As far as radium gimmicks go, consider the case of E. M. Byers,, who was addicted to a "radium water" preparation called "Radithor." Unlike a lot of these quack products, it actually did contain live radium, and Byers drank it by the case. He died in 1932, his skull eaten full of holes and his bones crumbling from radiation poisoning. His remains were buried in a lead-lined coffin, and when he was exhumed by researchers in 1968, they were still glowing.

There were people in the Era who worked hard to expose this sort of foolishness. A book called "50,000,000 Guinea Pigs" by Arthur Kallett and Frederick J. Schlink was a best seller in 1932, and thoroughly exposed the health-fad racketeers of the time, helping to lead to stronger regulations for health products and restrictions on what could be claimed in advertising. A few years later, Kallett and Schlink founded Consumers Union, publishers of Consumer Reports magazine, which -- like health-fad racketeers and gullible pill-poppers -- is still very much with us.

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

We still have hucksters like that today. They run health-food and nutritional-supplement stores.

I'll take my health food and nutritional-supplement centers over the pain-killers and anti-depressants I was on for Fibromyalgia any day - because they didn't help me, they made me worse. Only going to natural therapies made me better and I was able to get off those nasty RX meds.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't mean to condemn all such things by any means -- if a product works, it works. My issue is more with the marketing -- especially the exaggerated claims you find on the internet and in word-of-mouth for products that have never actually been scientifically proven to do what they're supposed to do -- and might not even actually be what it says on the label. Some random guy online or on the street says "hey try this, it's great, don't believe all the negative stuff," and before you know it Grandpa has turned blue.

This type of hype is what Kallett and Schlink fought hard against -- unproven, unprovable claims made to turn a fast buck. If they were alive today, I think they'd be horrified to see "how far we've come."

(I'm no fan of the pharmaceutical racket, either, but that's another rant...)

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

I don't mean to condemn all such things by any means -- if a product works, it works. My issue is more with the marketing -- especially the exaggerated claims you find on the internet and in word-of-mouth for products that have never actually been scientifically proven to do what they're supposed to do -- and might not even actually be what it says on the label. Some random guy online or on the street says "hey try this, it's great, don't believe all the negative stuff," and before you know it Grandpa has turned blue.

This type of hype is what Kallett and Schlink fought hard against -- unproven, unprovable claims made to turn a fast buck. If they were alive today, I think they'd be horrified to see "how far we've come."

(I'm no fan of the pharmaceutical racket, either, but that's another rant...)

Ah yeah I understand what you're saying now. That's why with my stuff, I've done much 'cross referencing' doing my own research. It was a 'learn as I go' sort of thing. But I agree with you on all that.

 

[kyboots]

I agree with both of you but let's not just throw the pharmaceutical groups under the bus, but the same claims made by the health food stores and mega vitamins and "all natural" products that cure us all. These are there to make money just like the drug companies. "All natural" is not regulated by anyone in this country. You can sell "mouse t--ds" as "all natural" and get by with it just label it. No one is even looking your way. Makes millions on the late night TV movie crowd. Hopefully won't kill you! Don't let anyone fool you. There are no conspiracies in health care. If there was a cure for AIDS it would be on the front page of the New York Times. This is America we don't hide cures! If there was a $100 a month Health Food Store or Nutrion Center "Mens Vitamin" that was any better then the common Walmart Brand we would all know it. No one hides it or keeps it a secret. Common Sense is in a steep decline in this world.We need to have some when we go into these stores and now even the vitamin centers in drug stores or sales, or Avon, or etc. etc.--John

BTW: Big Man the mental health system was ruined when they closed all the state mental health hospitals 25 years ago and "cured" them all. They gave them "new pills," and made them homeless on Medicaid.

 

[kyboots]

How far back in the memory do we have to go to qualify for "Medical Practitioners of Old"?--John

 

[RadioWave]

How far back in the memory do we have to go to qualify for "Medical Practitioners of Old"?--John

The older, the better - but any good stories are welcome.