How the times, and medications, have changed!
Zachary Kaster, pharmacist at Chief Drug in Tecumseh, pointed that out in his program at the Johnson County Museum in Tecumseh, entitled “Medicine Cabinet Memories: Then, Now, and What Were They Thinking?”
We still have those moments today, but most of the modern oopsies don’t compare to the glaring (to us) no-nos that came from Grandma’s medicine cabinet. Mama or Grandma or somebody would treat those cuts and scrapes that went along with growing up, or with physical labor, with Mercurochrome, which was discovered in 1919. One of the problems was that the medicine’s red color would mask the signs of infection, which it was supposed to prevent. Another problem was that it contained mercury. It was banned in 1998.
