u/DrBeboutsCabinet

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Sutherland's Eagle Eye Salve, manufactured in Paducah, Kentucky, in the early 1900s. The label calls it a "harmless remedy" while proudly declaring that it contains 4–5 grains of morphine sulfate per ounce.

The advertising inside the box goes even further, claiming it couldn't hurt a baby's eyes and that it always cured the problem.

Patients sometimes ask me when I’m referring them to another physician, “Is he an older doctor?”

I know exactly what they’re asking. They don’t really care how old the guy is. They want to know if he has some experience on him or if he just got out of training.

It occurred to me recently that somewhere along the way, I became the older doctor.

I graduated from medical school in 1995. I’ve been practicing for more than thirty years. Apparently there is no longer a reasonable argument that I’m one of the young guys.

The strange thing is, I think I like being the older doctor.

Not because I think older doctors are necessarily better. A young physician coming out of residency has some real advantages. He has been trained on drugs, tests and treatments that didn’t exist when I was in medical school. He may know something I don’t.

But there’s another side to it. I may have seen something he hasn’t.

Practice medicine long enough and you also become a little suspicious of the latest and greatest thing. I’ve watched drugs come out with tremendous excitement and later disappear. I’ve seen treatments that everybody was supposed to be doing eventually fall out of favor.

It doesn’t make me anti-new. I use plenty of newer treatments, and obviously you have to keep up with medicine. But I don’t automatically assume new means better anymore.

If an old generic drug has been used for forty years, costs a few dollars, and still does what I need it to do, I’m perfectly happy using it. We know a lot about that drug. We know how it behaves and most of the trouble it can cause. It has a track record.

Thirty years also teaches you something that is harder to put into words.

Sometimes a patient walks in and you know something isn’t right. Maybe the vital signs aren't particularly alarming. Maybe you haven’t even finished the history. But something bothers you.

That isn’t magic, and it certainly isn’t infallible. You’ve just seen enough patients that your brain is comparing the person sitting in front of you with thousands of other people you’ve seen over the years.

I had a tremendous amount of freshly learned medical knowledge when I was a young doctor. What I didn’t have was much experience actually being a doctor.

Now I have thirty years of it.

I’ve forgotten things. Younger doctors know things I don’t. I still have to keep learning, and I'll have to keep doing that for as long as I practice.

But I’ve also watched medicine change, watched patients surprise me, watched accepted treatments disappear, and learned that being absolutely certain of yourself in medicine is usually a good time to become a little less certain.

So apparently I’m the older doctor now.

I think I’m okay with that.

I just finished Dr. Mütter’s Marvels by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz.

I’d give it 4/5 stars. It’s not really a traditional historical biography. It reads more like an adventure novel, and the author definitely romanticizes Mütter—occasionally to the point that he seems more like the patron saint of nineteenth-century medicine than an actual man.

It’s very readable.

It moves quickly, it’s hard to put down, and it gives you a good feel for the strange transitional world of medicine Mütter lived in, his colleagues and rivals, his reputation, and eventually how his collection became the Mütter Museum we know today.

I would have liked more hard historical detail and a little less hero worship, but I learned quite a bit.

It's worth reading, particularly if you’re interested in medical history. Just read it as very good popular history rather than the final word on Thomas Dent Mütter.

Now I need to go to the Mütter Museum in Philly.

How did they come up with these claims!?

The seller is confident and the buyer is hopeful (or desperate)!

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This concoction containing Morphine and alcohol was commonly used for quieting babies. The problem was...they never woke up.

After that special night out where you found that perfect person, you may need a bottle of Pabst Okay Specific! Apparently it had what you needed for basically every bit of drainage under the belt. The best news, it was also about 60 proof!

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Some medicines disappear into history. Others just keep hanging around.

This old ADS Milk of Magnesia bottle still has much of its original paper wrapping, including the wrapping over the neck and closure.

Milk of magnesia—magnesium hydroxide—has been used for generations as an antacid and laxative. The bottle and packaging may look like relics from another era, but the medicine itself is still on pharmacy shelves today.

Strange Saturday 👁️

When most people hear “glass eye,” they picture something like a glass marble or a ping-pong ball — a complete artificial eyeball.

That's not what they look like.

Ocular prostheses are actually thin, curved shells designed to sit over the tissues within the eye socket. They are individually fitted and made to resemble the other eye, right down to the color of the iris, the shade of the sclera, and even the tiny blood vessels.

Historically, many were made from glass and individually crafted by skilled glassmakers. Modern prosthetic eyes are more commonly made from acrylic and are carefully painted to match the patient's remaining eye.

So yes, these really are glass eyes.

I found a cool script when I was sorting through my stacks of prescriptions. Heroin was actually written as a cough syrup for children and adults.

Dr. J. H. McLean's Liver and Kidney Balm was sold for $1.00 a bottle, and the advertising didn't exactly undersell it:

"$1.00 WILL BUY GOOD HEALTH."

So what did your dollar's worth of good health contain?

A 1915 analysis found McLean's Liver and Kidney Balm was 11.88% alcohol, along with sugar, caramel, a small amount of vegetable extract and possibly buchu. No alkaloids were detected.

I'm not sure how much good it did for your liver and kidneys.

But at nearly 12% alcohol, after enough of it you might have cared considerably less.

Bone surgery before electricity got involved!

These people weren't playing! Check out these ingredients:

Acetanilid — analgesic/antipyretic, but with the historical baggage of methemoglobinemia and other toxicity.

Belladonna + hyoscyamus — anticholinergic alkaloids. Dry things up, decrease secretions, etc., but hardly benign drugs.

Quinine hydrobromide — part of that enormous historical enthusiasm for quinine-containing cold preparations.

Then comes the bowel-cleansing artillery: podophyllin, colocynth and aloes. That's not “maybe you'll poop.” That's a group of old-school cathartics that explains why the manufacturer confidently promises you'll be moving your bowels within 8–10 hours.

Capsicum and caffeine round out the kitchen sink.

Throwback Thursday

Apparently you start with doctors, surgeons, nurses, “medical correctness,” and the reassurance that yes — single girls can wear them.

These four ads for Pursettes, Fibs, Meds, and Tampax all take a slightly different approach. Pursettes offered a “lubricated tip.” Fibs were “quilted” for comfort and safety. Tampax promised “baths as usual.” And Meds tackled the important question right up front: “Can Single Girls Wear Tampons?”

What really stands out is how heavily these ads leaned on medical authority. Doctors approved them. Surgeons developed them. Nurses used them. Tampax even advertised its acceptance by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Four products. Four sales pitches. And a pretty good little snapshot of how feminine hygiene was marketed in the 1950s.

Sold for burns, cuts, wounds, and other minor injuries. The tin proudly says its germicidal power was “proven by recognized bacteriological tests”—without bothering to tell us what those tests were.

It also claims activity against “Micrococcus aureus,” the old name for Staphylococcus aureus.

This design dates to July 1931.

Long used as a general antiseptic, this product has been around a long time. This ad is from 1883.

If you had a headache, fatigue, indigestion, or were simply "bilious," there was a good chance your doctor—or the patent medicine salesman—would recommend a laxative.

Here are a few examples from my collection:

• Pierce's Pleasant Purgative Pellets
• Dilaxin Tablets
• Alotabs
• DeWitt's Little Early Risers
• Dr. Spiegel's Stomach & Liver Pills

Different companies, different packaging, but all aimed at the same problem. Looking through old medicine cabinets, it's surprising just how many products were designed to keep the bowels moving.