The Cure is Worse than the Ailment

I had an incident with my card table this week that brought back a whoosh of memories. I was taking down the table to vacuum and one of the legs pinched the pad of my palm. It pinched it so quickly and so hard, that an immediate bruise popped up. Plus, it broke the skin, so it started to bleed.

               I put some ice in a napkin and held it on there and soon it felt better. The napkin also soaked up the dots of blood. After a while, I felt good enough to go about my business.  I finished putting away the card table and decided it was a good time to take a shower.

               I was innocently beginning to wash my hair when the shampoo got onto my palm. It stung a bit and I decided when I got dried, I would borrow my husband’s instant-skin product. Since he’s so handy around the house – fixing, painting, gardening, and building – he frequently comes into the bathroom and brushes on this little liquid to a cut or scrape on his fingers, arms, or legs. It seems to work quite well.

               So I took the little brush from the bottle and plopped it onto the little gouge of my own. YIKES! Immediately a jolt of agony ran from my hand to my brain!  It felt like I’d jabbed an ice pick into my hand!  I screamed and ran outside to confront my husband. Why had he never even blinked an eye when he used this stuff?  He smiled at me and said, “Oh, yeah, that stuff hurts,” and went on tinkering with the lawn mower.

               As I walked back into the house, my mind flooded with memories of childhood scrapes and bumps. My own mother used a couple of different products on these kinds of injuries. The first one was merthiolate (which we pronounced “ma-thy-o-laid”). In October 1929, Eli Lilly and Company developed and registered thimerosal under the trade name Merthiolate.  Merthiolate was used to kill bacteria and prevent contamination in antiseptic ointments, cremes, jellies, and sprays used by consumers and in hospitals. It also hurt like the devil when applied to any open wound.  As it turns out, it contained mercury, which can be harmful to humans if left on the skin too long. So in the late 1990’s, the product was banned. You can see what the little bottle looked like, below.

The second product my mom used was mercurochrome. This little bottle, seen below, was also a staple in our medicine cabinet.    Mercurochrome is a trade name for merbromin, which was the first antiseptic to contain mercury. The medicinal uses for this chemical were first recognized by Hugh H. Young in 1918, a physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was also used to treat scrapes and cuts and it should come as no surprise that it stung   Even though Mercurochrome had just a small amount of mercury, mercury poisoning was a consideration. Ultimately, in 1998 the FDA forbade the sale of Mercurochrome across state lines, which effectively killed the product.

My husband’s family didn’t use either of the above products. He tells me his grandmother had a great love of something called Absorbine Jr.  He claims that even if he cut off a toe, he would not go to grandma’s house, because she’d whip out the Absorbine and dab it on – and the pain was more than any cut he ever had.

Absorbine was originally created in 1892 by Wilbur F. Young and his wife, Mary Ida, to relieve the muscle pain of their hardworking horses that pulled heavy cargo. The popularity of the formula grew among farmers, who soon realized it quickly relieved their own aches and pains, too.  This medication is used to treat minor aches and pains of the muscles/joints, so it’s somewhat a mystery why Grandma put it on scrapes, but those were the good old days.  In 2013, Absorbine Jr. was discontinued, though we might still be able to get generic products that have the same ingredients. 

My guess?  These are the ingredients in that stuff I used on my hand wound. Because it really hurt more than the pinch in the first place!

1 Comment

  1. JOHN LLEWELYN

    STILL USE A PRODUCT CALLED ASORBINE PLUS – BUT ONLY FOR MUSCLE STRAINS AND JOINT AGGRAVATIONS – NEW PRODUCT USE OFTEN IS ASPERCREME WITH LIDOCAINE AND LAVENDER – NICE STUFF – MOM ALWAYS THOUGTH THE PAIN WOULD BE SO BAD WE WOULD FORGET ABOUT THE INJURY

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