I dreamed about merthiolate last night [View all]
I cut up stuff for salad with an old device called a Feemster slicer, which is a poor woman's mandoline. I hate making (and eating) salads, but my husband feels they are part of a healthy diet, and I love my husband, so I make him salads. This slicer makes it a lot easier.
But of course I slice my thumb on a regular basis, and a couple of days ago I did it again. It was no big deal--shallow but bloody--but it left one of those annoying dead skin flaps. This one was too small for me to bite or cut off. Plus it was sore. I rubbed Neosporin into it, but it still hurt.
In my dream, I kept asking people if they had any merthiolate or gentian violet.
As a kid, those were my preferred antiseptics. Unlike iodine (which is what I ended up painting my thumb with) they didn't sting--gential violet was especially gentle, but my mother hated it because of the stains it left.
When my parents died and the house was being emptied, I was unable to see to it myself. I told my husband and son I wanted everything out of the medicine cabinet, but they thought I was joking. Merthiolate, gentian violet, *paragoric* which is *opium*, cough medicine with *codeine* in it, and "drawing" ointment, which supposedly "drew" infection out of boils and things. It all got thrown away, dammit.
Were there wonderful over-the-counter medicines when you were a kid?
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