Mothers sometimes wonder why their boys take so readily to cigarettes, or their daughters to cocaine, never thinking that the soothing syrup, or cough mixture given freely by themselves to their children developed a craving for something stronger later on. Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, advertised for years in church as well as secular papers as “invaluable for children,” is cited in the report for 1888 of the Massachusetts State Board of Health as containing opium; also Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral, Dr. Bull’s Cough Syrup, Jayne’s Expectorant, Hooker’s Cough and Croup Syrup, Moore’s Essence of Life, Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup, and others too numerous to mention. The report says:—
“The sale of soothing syrups, and all medicines designed for the use of children, which contain opium and its preparations should be prohibited. Many would be deterred from using a preparation known to contain opium, who would use without question a soothing syrup recommended for teething children.”
Again, on page 149 the following is quoted from a prominent physician:—
“Among infants, and in the early years of life, soothing syrups are the cause of untold misery; for seeds are doubtlessly sown in infancy only to bear the most pernicious fruit in adult life. It is said that one of the best known soothing syrups contains from one to three grains of morphia to the ounce of syrup. I believe that stringent legal measures should immediately be taken to stop the sale of so-called soothing syrups containing opium, morphia or codeine.”
The writer has known mothers so ignorant of the nature of these soothing syrups as to deliberately put the baby to sleep upon them in order to insure relief from care for some hours.
Prof. J. Redding, M. D., says on this point:—
“While it may be true that an adult, of his own free will, and without incentive, or predisposing causes, does occasionally become a drunkard, I am convinced that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every one thousand individuals who become drunkards are made so in embryo, infancy, or childhood, by the use of alcoholic decoctions, soothing syrups, opiates, calomel, etc. which are given as medicines to allay pain, obtund nerve sensibility, to cure the little sufferer of his vital manifestations, of his mental discomforts, but leave the actual disease and its, perhaps, putrid causation to time and debilitated vitality to remove.”
Of the danger and harmfulness of patent cough mixtures The American Therapist says:—
“Cough mixtures as a rule, do more harm than good. Nine times out of ten the principal ingredient is opium. It is true that opium may lessen the tendency to cough, but it does great damage by arresting the normal secretions, and the system becomes affected by the poisons from the kidneys, skin, stomach, intestines and the mucous membrane lining the upper air passages. Not only do these mixtures arrest every secretion in the body, but they also show their deteriorating and degrading effect through the stomach. They contain substances which tend to disorder and derange digestion.”