Mercurochrome.... Merthiolate...
If you read the words above and have no clue what I am talking about chances are you are much younger than me or at least younger than your early thirties. If you read the words above and cringed then you know exactly what I'm talking about!
It came in a little bottle with a cap that served as a dropper or just had a stick on it. It was this reddish orange color that stained everything it touched including your skin for days. And it was what my momma used on every cut, scrape, or injury involving blood throughout my childhood. Just the mention of it brought tears to my eyes. Sometimes I wouldn't even tell my momma if I cut myself or had a bike wreck for fear she'd break out the mercurochrome.
What made me remember the good ole days where all cuts and injuries were treated with this reddish orange antiseptic from the devil? My little one was running the other night and fell on the concrete driveway- scraping the crud out of his knee. He came running up to me, big tears streaming down his face and a small stream of blood running down his leg. "Don't touch it momma! No I don't want you to wash it off!" I ran in the house scrambling for something to clean it with. I pushed the peroxide aside and grabbed this Instant Antibiotic spray foam - the creators of Band-Aid produce it and in big letters on the front of the bottle it reads... HURT-FREE.
So as I sat there coaxing my little one in to letting me spray this on his leg, promising it wouldn't hurt I had flashbacks of the cleansing antiseptic my momma dabbed on my cuts and scrapes. It was most definitely NOT hurt free. It stung like the dickens and she never promised it wouldn't hurt. In most cases the application of mercurochrome to my injury was more painful than the injury itself. I think peroxide would have been a welcome alternative. But before you start thinking of my momma as some demented woman who took pleasure in dishing out more pain and if you are younger, just know that it was what the doctor recommended. And did you know that whatever properties it possessed, it also apparently aided in minimizing scarring?
So if you grew up with mercurochrome then you are probably as thankful as I am for all of the research and progress and for companies like Johnson and Johnson that produce hurt free antiseptics.
And I guess what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... In 1998 the US Food and Drug Administration said that mercurochrome was not generally recognized as safe and effective as an over the counter antiseptic. Oh yeah and it contains mercury. Ok FDA- coming out with that observation 20 years earlier would have saved me a lot of pain!
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5 comments:
That is so funny you posted that. We were just talking about that the other night. I loved that stuff b/c it was pink...wasn't it??? :)
Ashley
I was just trying to remember the name of mecurochrome. My moms instant boo-boo answer! I remember it being sort of a pinky/orange color and it worked every single time!:)
Are you sure we're not related? Sounds like we had the same Mom,and in my case if Mom wasn't around, Grandma. They both used to argue that he doesn't like mercurochrome.(As I sat bleeding to death)Well, I don't remember who won, but the mercurochrome came out! That's when I started crying, like a baby! No, No, NO! Well, it's either that, or the Iodine! That was worse, because Iodine stung twice as bad! I remember requesting Bactine spray. It smelled good enough to eat. Well, at least back then. It's too expensive, My Mom would say. I guess looking back to my childhood, we were poor too! I definitely remember Mercurochrome. I even mentioned that the other day to a frind of mine who is about 9 years younger. He said, yeah. But I think he was just "yessing" me, because that definitely would have stirred up a conversation! Do they still make this crap? LOL
Yes, it did sting a little, but it wasn't torture. It also did a great job of preventing infection. Never found anything that could best it for paper cuts, either. It is all gone now. Wonder what happened? Thanks for the memory.
My husband’s grandfather called it “monkey blood”!!!
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