BEING ill as a child was made even worse by the godawful things you were made to take for it. Here are six vile ‘remedies’ your mum swore by.
Milk of Magnesia
Tasted like a Satanic blend of powdered chalk and strained cat vomit. You’d be forced to hold your nose and gulp it down either as a laxative or to treat excess stomach acid, when both were less unpleasant than drinking this puke. Truth be told, the mere sight of the white bottle would usually be enough to give you the shits without unscrewing the top.
Cod liver oil
Every morning during winter you’d be forced to swallow a spoonful to ‘keep colds at bay’, though why ingesting the liquified contents of a fish’s internal organs would stop you getting the sniffles was anyone’s guess. The capsules were less obnoxious, but if one burst in your mouth you’d still have the nightmarish sensation of performing fellatio on a fish.
TCP
Cuts and grazes were a part of growing up you didn’t mind too much – until your mother spotted them and insisted on smearing them with this liquid torture. You weren’t crying until it began to sting worse than cuddling a wasps’ nest, and then no-one would sit next to you in school all day because you f**king stank.
Calamine lotion
Ineffective pink emulsion weirdly used to combat chickenpox. It did almost nothing, apart from slightly reduce the itching for 0.005 seconds, and now you’d be painted bright pink from head to foot. With your spots filled with yellow pus you looked like a juvenile Mr Blobby.
Lucozade
The slogan ‘Lucozade aids recovery’ is the biggest lie in marketing history. Some people love it, but many hate it and it does taste weirdly like toilet disinfectant. It came in f**king massive bottles, which your mum would insist you finished even after you were better, because she’d bought it now and wasn’t pouring it down the sink. ‘It’s just like pop really’ she’d tell you, the massive bullshitter.
Suppositories
Nothing cured a bout of constipation faster than being threatened with the grim discomfort and downright embarrassment of having something resembling a WW2 torpedo forced into your unwilling arse. Didn’t do a lot in truth either, apart from leaving you with a hideously greasy bum the next time you went for a dump.
