Don’t Knock Vicks VapoRub – And Response (2)

All us aging middle-life-timers at one time or another had Vicks VapoRub rubbed under our schnozzes by Mom. When I’d get a chest cold, I’d be in bed for a day or two, and Mom would come to me regularly and apply VapoRub for my sinuses, aspirin for temperature (we sometimes washed it down with 7-Up, when 7-Up tasted remotely like lemon), tuck me in andoffer a lot of love. Since those days, I can recall the feeling that combination of the VapoRub and the lights being turned off by the woman who loved me more than another ever could. I’d lay in the dark, smelling this stuff, feeling my sinuses open up a little, feel the funny tingling sensation of a fever slowly dissipating, me laying there and feeling heat turning to chill, then back-and-forth, until exhaustion mercifully allowed me to sleep.

I always liked the following morning, as Mom’s idea of healing was to bring me breakfast-in-bed: two slices of toasted bread, buttered, with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled atop. Sometimes she brought me what she called egg-nog: two raw eggs, beaten with cinnamon and vanilla extract. It was delicious.

Just over an hour ago the television news announced that Vicks VapoRub is being accused of causing respiratory problems. This brought me to a dead-halt, and I went to my shelf and fetched a 40-year-old jar of the stuff I’m so attached to. Folks, I’m in antiques and junk, and this is old enough to be a glass jar. I used it as self-treatment just 12 weeks ago, lived to tell the story.

Let me tell you the ingredients, then I’ll make my point: “Active Ingredients: Special Vick Medication (camphor, menthol, spirits of turpentine, eucalyptus oil,, cedar leaf oil, mytistica oil, thymol) Compounded by original Vick process.” I don’t know, but I’m guessing this is the VapoRub formula for a half century. Most of it sounds as innocuous than the base of that by-product of the oil industry, known commercially as Vaseline. To this day I use this instead of this lip-stick stuff. It always protects my lips, under any conditions.

I don’t know what spirits of turpentine and thymol is, but I’m not too much concerned, and here’s why. The previous generations took natural things and combinations as salves, and they worked. But not too long ago we are told that pharmaceuticals are so dangerous that we shouldn’t flush expired stuff into the lakes, waters and ground-tables, and when I called an expert, she said I should take any old pharmaceuticals and mix them with soiled remains of acat litter box and trash them, but not flush, as if I did, the bad stuff would find its way into the water table.

And if I took a three-year-old container of meds and flushed them, it ends up in the local river system, with the contents presumably either being soon eaten, or the rest part of the sediment. And now we are told the fish are being born with characteristics of both fish genders. Notpassing judgment, I guess the worry is the resulting young fish won’t reproduce and advance their generations, one end displaying their dorsal fin more aggressively, the other worrying if their gills are the right color.

And, we’ve been told for more than a decade that the more we take antibiotics, the more our immune system would suffer.

Yikes. Shouldn’t we go back to Mom, Vicks VapoRub, and a time when your mother could make you an “egg-nog” from raw eggs, cinnamon and vanilla extract? Got to admit, I miss those days very much.

I’m only 56. How much will everything degrade, until we can’t go back?

John R. SmickleChattanoogajsbottomfeeder@juno.com

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Mr. Smickle,

That’s a nice story, but I think you may have turned the channel too quickly. The story being reported all over the news today and yesterday is in regards to a study that just came out showing that Vick’s VapoRub is harmful to children under two years of age.

Apparently, although there is a warning on the label stating this, people have been using them on children this young anyway, so the news report is certainly very helpful and relevant.

I think your main point is still a good one, but I just thought I’d set the record straight.

John Stegall

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Mr. Smickle,I too have fond memories which come rushing back upon getting a good whiff of the good old VapoRub. I have no memories of feeling sick, but the warm feel and pleasant scent will put me to sleep like a baby.

As for the new “study,” Mr. Stegall forgot to mention that the test subjects were ferrets, but then I suppose ferrets are exactly like little humans.

Well, I have to go as there are lots of shinny things around the house I need to collect before I finish off the two day old cat food leftovers and curl up in the back of the closet to take a nap.

P.S. Do not apply Vick’s VaporRub to your ferret.

Scotty MillerChattanooga