The Mother's Friend by Jo-Ann Roberts

 

If you've been reading my past blogs about products or inventions in the 19th and early 20th century, you know I'm a history nerd and how easy it is for me to go down the rabbit hole when I'm researching a new book. Such was the case when I needed to know about teething medicines for my upcoming release, Winning the Widow's Heart. While it mentions Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup only once, I wanted to make sure the information was accurate.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a first-time mother with a teething baby in the middle of the 19th century. Her cries keep everyone in the household awake for nights on end.

What's a mother to do?

Enter Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, one of the most successful, famous or infamous medicines from the past and was called the "baby killer" by some.

Charlotte Winslow was a midwife and studied infant teething and other related pains. Sometime prior to 1844, she prepared this highly successful potion for children teething. Soon after, she gave the recipe to her son-in-law, Jeremiah Curtis and his partner Benjamin Perkins, druggists in Bangor, Maine. They manufactured and sold it under the name Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup.

The syrup claimed "to sooth any human or animal", and it quieted restless infants
and small children. Widely marketed in the U.K. and the U.S., the company promoted their product in recipe books, calendars, and trade cards. 

               

The syrup was sold in bottles about five inches tall by one and one-quarter inches in diameter.

The primary ingredients were morphine, alcohol, water softener, and aqua ammonia. 

Eww! I can't even begin to imagine what this may have tasted like! 

A teaspoon of the syrup had the morphine content of twenty drops of laudanum. It's inconceivable that the dosage suggested was that a month-old baby receive no more than two to three drops, and children six months old and up were to be given a half teaspoonful three or four times a day is alarming! The recommended dosage for children with dysentery was similar to the amounts already given but was to be repeated every two hours until improvement was noticed.

So, it isn't hard to understand why so many babies who were given this concoction went to sleep only to never wake up gain, coining the syrup's nickname, "the baby killer". However, many parents swore by the syrup as evidenced by the following letter written by a Massachusetts father...

Dear Sir: I am happy to be able to certify to the efficiency of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, and to the truth of what it is represented to accomplish. Having a little boy suffering greatly from teething, who could not rest and at night by his cries would not permit any of the family to do so, I purchased a bottle of the Soothing Syrup, in order to test the remedy, and, when given to the boy according to the directions, its effect upon him was like magic; he soon went to sleep, and all pain...disappeared....Every mother who regards the health and life of her children should possess it.                     Mr. H.A.Alger, Lowell, Mass.

Once the Pure Food and Drug Act passed in the U.S., Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was forced to remove morphine from their syrup and remove "soothing" from the brand name. Even so, the syrup was sold until the 1930s.

So, the question begs to be asked: Why would a parent give their child such lethal medication?

Ingredients in 19th and early 20th century medicines weren't stated as they are today nor did people understand the full effects of these ingredients. So, without this information, people living in the era of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup put their trust in druggists and doctors about the medicines they were prescribing. Yet even those who had medical training may not have known the full effects of certain drugs.

It's easy to understand how a product like this syrup would have appealed to weary parents looking for a cure-all for fussy babies and infants. 

Thankfully, advances in today's modern medicine ensure that such a loss of so many children as a result of this syrup, and other drugs like it, does not happen again.

Disclaimer: Before you think that I had my heroine give the baby several doses of the syrup, please let me assure you, no babies were harmed in the telling of this story.  

New Release!

She was branded as a traitor to the Union.

He was her sworn enemy.

A marriage of convenience would be perilous...wouldn't it?

In the summer of 1864 in Roswell, Georgia, widow Sofie Bishop struggles to manage the small family vineyard on her own. Now with her home in ruins her only option was working at the Ivy Woolen Mill. Her woes go from bad to worse when the Yankees arrive on Roswell's doorstep.

Courteous and kind, Captain Seth Ramsey is not what Sofie expects from a Union officer. However charming he might be, she's determined to keep her distance. Even when she finds herself branded as a traitor, arrested, and transported north to an uncertain destiny, she didn't think she could lose much more to the Yankees.

But she was wrong.

Will his vow of love mend her wounded heart? Or would a marriage of convenience be the best she can offer?

CLICK HERE

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