Shopping baskets through the years

Scott's emulsion! If matron thought you were faking being poorly she forced on you! Vile tasting stuff!
If she thought you were genuine you had the nice tasting one with liquorice and opium!
Oh the joys of a boarding school education

Opium? Good heavens!

Kaolin et morph used for centuries for diarrhoea! Very effective!

My mum used to give me Indian Brandy [but I don't know what it was for ].

You can still buy kaolin and morphine. But that's not the same as opium, is it?

DH used to swear by Indian Brandy - I don't think there's any alcohol in it, seems to be mostly herbal!

Afraid it is Ana!

Porridge and fried bread for breakfast, national orange juice and a tablespoonful of Virol.
I used to walk around with a bottle of Kaolin and morphine in my pocket when I worked at a children's hospital, sonnei dysentery was rife. Good stuff, did the trick.

Virol! On toast! Marvellous!
No can get!

We used to have cod liver oil and malt, one tablespoon at bedtime during the winter! If we were unfortunate enough to suffer constipation mother gave us syrup of figs from a bottle. It was horrid. For breakfast we had corn flakes or rice krispies, sometimes we got Ricicles, I didn't like them as much though. A couple of times a week we had bacon sandwiches for breakfast. We had a man with a tractor and trail or round the street every Saturday selling fruit and vegetables. We got all our potatoes etc from him. He also sold crisps and little trays of toffee which was so hard you had to break it up with a hammer.

We had 'something' on toast; baked beans, tinned spaghetti, cheese, scrambled or poached eggs, sardines or pilchards in tomato sauce. Sometimes as a special treat and in season we had tomatoes or mushrooms on toast.

Tinned spaghetti.... how cosmopolitan was that? And on toast..... the ultimate carb overload, not that we knew anything about 'carbs' back in those halcyon days.
Back to 'the white stuff'. I thought I'd cracked it with Scott's Emulsion, went to bed happy, then Galen pops up this morning to say it tasted vile! Oh bugger..looks like it's back to Google. I'm becoming obsessed with finding out what the heck it was. I really should get out more.

I hated Scott's Emulsion but loved syrup of figs. The other thing I liked was National dried milk mixed with sugar in a paper bag, and you dipped your finger in it like sherbet.
I also loved the national orange juice but not the cod-liver oil. Malt was delicious.
I am definitely old, 73 and a half!!!! Don't feel it though.

Does anyone remember the metal 'coins' the Co-op had before the number system. They were very thin and stamped with the value of a coin, and I think you collected them, and could then cash the in.

absentgrandma could it have been "somebody's" bronchial emulsion? I've been wracking my brains all afternoon trying to remember the makers name.
I do remember it tasted nice.

'White stuff', other than Milk of Magnesia which was chalky/minty I don't remember. Dr Collis Brown's was opium-based and made your tummy feel all warm (hardly surprising!)

When we kids had coughs, my Mum used a cough mixture called Pulmo Bailey which was very effective and is still available. When I recently examined the label I realised that its efficacy was based on Codeine!

You can still buy Dr Collis Browne's Mixture, but it now contains morphine and peppermint oil!

Oh Crow the national orange juice was lovely! I've never found anything else that tasted like it.

Was anyone else give Fenning's Fever Cure? It surely was the formulation of the Devil.

Parents certainly did seem to have an obsession about bowel movements in those days. I had to eat a spoonful of Sennakot granules - dry and disgusting - if I didn't 'go' every single morning...

I can still remember the foul taste. I'm sure it was supposed to be mixed with milk or water

Did anyone have to have Gregory's mixture for their bowels? It was a concoction of rhubarb and something else.
Also every Easter when we reached teen-age years, my sister and I were given a tablespoon of sulphur with treacle. It was revolting. It was supposed to be good for the skin.
I have to add, in all honesty, mine is excellent.

In East Africa, in the 60s we had the kaolin and morphine mixture and something called TCP emulsion. I'm not sure what the latter had in it, though I'm pretty sure there was kaolin there; it certainly smelt and tasted of TCP. It worked like a charm on tropical tummy bugs.

The name 'Owbridge's' has come into my mind. Was it cough medicine? Any bells ringing? I loathed Scott's Emulsion but loved the malt and orange juice. Syrup of Figs and Milk of Magnesia, yes. And Camphorated Oil - we used to sing a song about it to the tune of John Brown's Body.

Camphor-amphor-amphor-ated (x 3)
So we rubbed him with camphorated oil.

Yep....Owbridges was cough mixture. I think it had an illegal substance in it too as it was another of my addictions... like those funny biegey-brown sweets that looked like little squares of cardboard (sorry, that's not a very good description). They tasted gritty, but had an addictive taste like cough mixture. What the heck were they called?

They might have been Victory V cough lozenges, absentgrandma, although they were more oblong than square. You could suck them until they got really, really thin!