Growing up during the Great Depression of 1929 preceded the advent of exotic medicines for all kinds of illnesses. In every household, in the medicine cabinet of a Depression family was a bottle of iodine. When iodine was administered to a cut anywhere on the body, you had a very stinging sensation. But that was all we had to treat wounds of almost every kind and so for whatever ailed the human spirit, iodine was the answer.
A little later in the Depression came along a product known as mercurochrome. When mercurochrome was administered to a cut, for example, there was no stinging sensation. Like iodine, it was red in color and one could show off the wound, which was clearly marked by the stain of the medicine. I have no medical credentials whatsoever, but I believe it is fair to say that mercurochrome was mostly a pacifier which pleased the patient but actually did not do much of anything.
Whether iodine, also red, was an effective medicine is open for medics at this point to argue about. But it is also fair to say that the wound has been treated with iodine and the wounded person suffers the stings and arrows, he feels that the agony he is going through means that the healing process will soon start.
There was an occasion when I was nine or ten years old when the ragweed in the lot next to our house needed to be cut because the weeds were too high. I had hay fever, which could only be solved by cutting the weeds down. So I took a scythe out to work on the weeds. As everyone knows, the blade on a scythe has to be sharpened periodically, which is done with a whetstone carried in the rear pocket. When the blade becomes dull, the whetstone is taken from the rear pocket and the blade is then stroked from the butt end to the tip on one side, and then from the tip to the butt end on the other side. During this process, unfortunately, I got a little too close to the blade and, with it being sharp, it nearly cut my finger off. With the Depression going on, there was only one treatment and that was iodine. It must have been effective, because my right forefinger shows the scars but the finger is still intact. Mercurochrome would never have been so effective.
With the American economy again sinking into another depression, perhaps iodine and mercurochrome will make a comeback. It is quite likely that Medicare will decline to pay for treatment with iodine and mercurochrome because those medicines existed long before the Medicare bill came into use. I have no idea whether iodine and mercurochrome are still produced. But with another depression looming, it might be well to keep them in mind. If nothing else, it will save a trip to the emergency rooms which are now badly overcrowded.
This has been a small nostalgic trip to the days of the 1930s. It may well be that iodine and mercurochrome were ineffective drugs but for those of us who grew up during the Depression, they were capable of giving peace of mind to those who were wounded. For a wounded person, peace of mind is a valuable commodity.
E. E. CARR
November 9, 2008
Essay 345
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Kevin’s commentary: I’m going to go ahead and surmise that Mercurochrome will not be making a comeback anytime soon, considering the FDA banned the substance in 1998. Shockingly, mercurochrome contains mercury, an element that people generally don’t like having in their bodies. Durn.
I’d also like the record to reflect that as a remedy to hay fever, “going into the middle of the thing you’re allergic to, and making a big ruckus with a scythe” seems a) miserable and b) like it would release all the pollen in the process anyway. Major points to Pop’s parents for coming up with a good way to get the weeds cut, though!
Or who knows, maybe it was effective? In Austin, it’s the cedar trees that always gave me trouble — maybe I should have just gone and cut down all the trees in a several-block radius.