RICHMOND Its amazing some of our ancestors lived as long as they did not because of the illnesses they faced, but because of their cures. Back in the 1800s, there were few medicines that did not contain some form of alcohol or dangerous, addictive drug; cough medicines with cocaine to stimulate the body, under-the-weather syrups with opium for pain relief, little bottles of chloroform to help one get to sleep. Whats most disturbing about the potential danger there was in using these over-the-counter medicines is that they were distributed as freely to babies and children as they were to adults.

Clear glass bottles of laudanum, a derivative of opium, was sold to help sleepless babies. Paregoric, another opium product used for diarrhea, warned this is a dangerous preparation, especially for children but went on to list a dosage table: a baby of three days old may take two drops, a baby of one week old may take four drops, a baby of six months old may take six drops, a one-year-old child may take ten drops, and a five-year-old may take twenty drops. The concoction was comprised of forty-six percent alcohol and 1.82 grams of opium per fluid ounce.

On September 3, 1894, Ernest and Henrietta Callaghan of Main Street in Carolina lost their six-day-old son who hadnt yet been named. An Irish immigrant and long-time cigar-maker for the Cross family of Charlestown, Ernest had experienced fatherhood four times previous to the latest birth, and had just buried another child, 1-year-old Walter, less than a month before. While Walter had succumbed to cholera, the newest additions cause of death was listed as Russells White Drops.

However, it would be nineteen years before the company that produced the anti-convulsion medicine Russells White Drops would find themselves held accountable for being the cause of infant deaths. It was determined that the company failed to properly label the amount of codeine and alcohol in their drops. While the label on the bottle declared it to be safe for babies and children, the Food & Drug Administration discovered that it was entirely unsafe for the young.

While many adults found themselves addicted to cocaine and opium during the 1800s, through their use of over-the-counter pain and cough medications, the efforts to use the same cures for their infants maladies unfortunately had a great likelihood of proving to be a fatal decision.

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Baby medicine much stronger in 1800s - Ricentral.com