Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Cough Drops

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

William Goldman wrote in The Princess Bride "True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops." This week on Sawbones, we ruin them. We're really sorry, Bill. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that I've still had my cop for the mouth. Wow! Hello, and welcome to Sabon's, Emerald Turb Miss Guy Admitis and I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Well said, triumphilling, inspirationally. There I say it.

I'm on the road to recovery after last week's, uh, infirmament, common cold perhaps, maybe something more serious. Cold. It was a cold. It was a cold. The doctor is quite serious. Cold, it was a cold. It was a cold. The doctor's not quite sure.

No, it was a cold. Everybody had a cold. We were on tour and I was in a hotel room in which everyone it seemed was coughing. Yeah. But me. We were really passing it around. It was rough.

So much coughing, nonstop coughing all day, all night, just lots and lots of coughing Seems you've really got a near-nerfs. Oh, no, I just I I just hated to hear you all so sick Uh-huh. It was my emotional my it worried me You're saying the part of you that is in all human beings that worries about sick people that you're related to was active. Yes. The neurons of that part of your brain, the sick sympathy for your family members. Those synapses were firing nonstop. Yeah. No, it's just you all coughed a lot. I love you. I'm glad you're all fine now. I wish you hadn't cough so much. Well, sorry, I guess.

It seemed insufficient at this point, but I'm sorry. Now it's fine. Really, it's fine. It's fine. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that none of you attempted to stop your cough with any cough drops. Yeah, which is unusual for me. I usually you know what? I just wanted to get get it all out get it okay

Not hold the coughs in no not hold the coughs in I needed the bad things to come out and I wanted the coughs to be gone so I Just let them go because if you hold them in that's like a set number of coughs to be gone. So I just let them go. Because if you hold them in, that's like a set number of coughs that are stored within you. Okay. So I didn't want to hold them back.

I just like coughs. I went for it. Which is unusual for me. A lot of times I'll go with a nice Ricola. That would be nice. You didn't say it the way in the... Ricola! There we go. There we go. You didn't say it the way in the... Re-coma! There we go, there we go.

It seems like there's a lot of misinformation about coughs that you're spreading right now, and that is concerning because I wasn't going to do an episode about coughs per se. This is just focusing on cough drops. So you keep saying cough and it's making my... Like when somebody yons and it's goingawns and it's not how that works. But thank you to AJ and Hope and Gambit for recommending this topic because there's an interesting history cough drops there. It's a story. This is something where you and I are sort of equally matched because in middle school,

Tommy Redden I did a project about which cough drop works the best. So that's, I'm going in with some of my own research. When would you like to discuss your methods? In independent study. Yeah. Well yes, my method was I was sick. In results. Which questions?

I was sick, which kept me from working on my science fair project until quite close to the science fair. It's going to be an abstract. And then I started testing different cost drops that we had around the house to see which one made me feel best, one after the other. And then I just kind of wrote that down. So your in was just in me. One, just, me.

I'm the, that was a good pun. Your in was one. Number one. Yeah. One six. Just one. I have two nostrils. Is that anything?

This was a bad study. I, well, I love you. I don't even know that I need to. The money into a cough drop research. So I have to do my own studies. There isn't a lot of cough drop research that is true. But do I even need to know? I don't even think it matters what the result was.

All I remember is that we came into the decision that Lutins is basically just rock candy. It's just hard candy, but that's about it. The P value on this study is not impressive. I don't think that this is gonna. The one with the numbing agent. Kill it on confidence interval. For sore throat.

Yeah, cervical. Cepacol, throat. Yeah, sepical. Sepical, yeah. Okay. So from what Samarized do, if they're disgraced by having a cold, which is sepacoo, so they, it's different. So let's talk about cough drops or throat, lozenges, if you prefer. Yes.

Either way, they are regarded as medicine, why pretty much in the US and pretty much in the US, and not just in the US, other places, but it's funny because if you go into the history of cough drops, there are places where they're still kind of seen as just like candy, just like candy you get to eat when you're sick. And that's probably due to their origins.

Now, obviously people have been making things for like sore throats and coughs and cold symptoms since people have been making things for like sore throats and coughs and cold symptoms since people have been making fake medicine, which is the beginning of time, the beginning of humans. I know they just give rock candy because that's what it said on the box of rock candy that you buy at the crackle barrel. It would say this is like an old timey sore throat remedy. Sure.

Well, and basically that's how it started. I'm not really going gonna get into the ancient history of cough drops, the Egyptians definitely made something with honey and herbs, and it would be kind of similar to what we'd think of as a lozange, and certainly other ancient civilizations did as well. But I really wanna talk about the history of the branded cough drops we know today.

How did we end up with what we think of as medicine for cough, but maybe isn't? Okay, I'm I'm I'm I'm Ben's an edelso. So so this story starts as most good stories do with a guy named Sly Hawkins. Oh, I can already tell this guy's going to be a smooth operator. Good name, right? Very good. Sly Hawkins. Sly Hawkins. There's not, we don't know a lot about Sly. I mean, we're gonna make a lot of assumptions about Sly on this podcast probably. It's completely on his name.

Yes. We, the different accounts call him a traveling salesman. Perhaps a journeyman, a peddler, a street vendor, perhaps just a broke hungry guy. It's hard to say. You could be, I think all those things, right? It's, you know what, his name was Sly, I bet he could encompass all things, these and more.

That's true. Sly Hawkins. One way or another, legend has it, well, this is not legend. I mean, it's one of those stories that flew right down. It's definitely based in truth. It's probably been embellished over time. But there is, there was a guy named Sly Hawkins, who definitely in 1852 walked into James Smith's ice cream shop slash restaurant. I've heard accounts. It's an ice cream shop at the restaurant. Either way, James Smith was a guy who sold food and

Sly Hawkins was a guy who needed some food, but he had no cash So he walked in and he said hey listen, I'm really hungry. I don't have any money, but what I do have is a recipe for cough candy. It's really good cough candy. You can make it here and sell it and I bet you'll make a bunch of money if you'll just give me some food. That is the wildest pitch. So anyway, sharks, that's my fish. I'll give you my recipe for cough candy if you give me some food. Kevin, I can see your unconvinced. We can do a licensing deal with my recipe for a cough candy and exchange for food. Uh, so anyway, apparently Smith bought into it. I don't think Mr. Wonderful would, but

Smith did. And he said, you have to at that point, it's so wild. What do you have to lose? It's like a magic beans kind of thing. Sure., I go, okay, I'll make up your, I have some food. Let's see this magic cough drop. So he gave him some food and he went and mixed up in his kitchen, a batch of these cough candies. And he named his new candy after he had two boys, William and Andrew.

And so he called it Smith Brothers' cough drops after his two boys. And he basically made these little, they look like little hard candies. And he put them in glass jars on the counter and in the windows of the store. You can imagine that's like a very attractive school. There's jars sparkling candies in the sunlight.

They've all fused into one gigantic cough candy. You know, don't see, don't say that, because what I was envisioning is that that sound they make if they're made well enough that they don't stick together. It's good because they didn't. They're clicking clatter in there. Oh, yeah. It's a good one.

I love that. And then they poured into the little paper bag. You know what I mean? It's so appetizing. Which is exactly what they would do. Pour them into little paper envelopes and sell them. The doctor kept his jelly babies in. Yeah.

And and Smith Brothers cough drops did well for about 20 years like that. And as the as the brothers William and Andrew grew older, they aided in the family business and helped with new recipes and flavors and whatnot. But it stayed for a long time, just like that, glass jars of little pieces of candy that you could, I mean, they were candy, clearly, you could use them for a cough as well, but they were candy.

But as they grew older, the brothers had bigger plans. They thought, you know what? These candies have a lot of potential. People really seem to like them. They buy them a lot. And also, I feel like we might lose an opportunity if we don't start packaging them, because a glass jar with hard candies is pretty easy to knock off, right? Sure, right.

It's pretty easy to replicate. And so a lot of other drug stores started to do the same thing with whether or not they knew the recipe didn't really matter. They just made some hard candy. And they would call it sort of things like Smith Brothers, like Schmidt Brothers. Smith Smith. Smith.

They were the smith sisters. Yeah. They were just other Smith Brothers. They're just people just like, yeah, different, they just found difference with brothers. Straight up, Nogoff. Here's some Smith brothers, Candy, whatever. And so they thought, you know what,

we need to do a better job of selling this by packaging it and patenting it and marketing it as a unique thing that you can't get at any old drug store. So they started packaging them in these little cardboard boxes that had the brother's pictures on it. And you may have seen this picture. It's really easy if you Google Smith Brothers coff drops, but you may have seen it. It's two guys heads facing each other and they both have long beards.

You may have seen this box before. Yeah, it sounds familiar. Yeah. It became pretty famous because not only was it a very well-known and unique box, I mean, two guys with long-flowing beards facing each other on the box, but they were very protective of this trademark. And so it became almost comical how much they would go after anybody who tried to copy I mean when your things called Smith brothers you you really do have to drop quite the line in the sand I'm assuming so by 1877 they'd release this box this package with the two brothers facing each other and they actually put trademark on the box and they put trade underneath actually put trademark on the box and they put trade underneath Williams head and mark

underneath Andrews head. So if you look at their heads facing each other and it has all like the print in the middle Smith brothers and then under their heads are the words trademark. But because of the way it was pictured it led to people calling the brothers trade and mark. Really? Yeah, which is kind of a, I don't know, in the world of nicknames, trade on its own is, I guess, okay? Trade, yeah, I can see that. This might sound sprained.

What's the sprained? This is trade, but Mark is a nickname is a name. Yeah, I mean, you can see how that is probably the source of the confusion I would guess. It's just a name. It's a regular mark. What's your name? Well, my name is Andrew, but everyone calls me Mark.

Is that your middle name? Nope. Anyway, it's my under name. And they were known as this, for even long after they weren't running the company they had died, they had passed on to other people in the family. They were still kind of known as trademarked by people who bought the candies and like used them,

they would talk about the brother's trademark because they looked that way. But either way, it was a good idea. All this stuff with the packaging because the Smith Brothers cough drops became the first really dominant cough drop in the US. And maybe the first cough drop, I mean, it depends on how you,

you know, everybody was making sure, right? Like you said, the Egyptians and everybody else. But, but the one that was most well known and the one we can trace back pretty early and had a big presence in the US will Smith Brothers cough drop. You still get them? They're very hard to find.

Yes, there I, I'm gonna get into a little bit more of a history of a company. I bet that's a rough recipe. I'm going to get into a little bit more of a history of a company. I bet that's a rough recipe. I bet that'll really put a little... ...bring in your step. The original recipe, by the way, was probably just sugar. Oh, okay. It's not like intense fisherman's friend level.

I mean, originally, and I say that because there is a moment we'll get to where they actually do add menthol to them. So the original ones were probably just hard candies. Maybe something herbal, maybe something like that, but more just online with hard candies. Now, of course, as they became successful, there were more competitors, right? As people saw that this cough drop thing is really taking off. Right, we gotta get our own. And instead of just knocking it off, other companies decided,

you know what, we're just going to have our own brand. And while easy, we're just going to make our own kind. We're going to make our own thing. One such competitor was William Henry Ludon. Of Ludon's fame. There you go. You're going to recognize these names. It's the Pat and medicine days.

You name your medicine after yourself. Right. If I made a medicine in those days, it would be called Sydney's. Sydney's Sydney's on Sydney's vegetable compound with now with cocaine. No, no, no, no. Just sugar, just candy and sugar and vegetables woman hope. His candy factory, Lunden had a candy factory at first, of course. All these people did pretty much. And it started in his family's kitchen in Reading, Pennsylvania. And he was originally making like, because of the Pennsylvania Dutch community, he was making like some traditional German type candies and things and selling them,

a lot of chocolates and whatnot. And he thought, with this new cough drop market that he could put an interesting spin on it. He saw an opportunity Menthall was already a popular cold medicine By the late 1800s and a lot of people would just carry around a bottle of it when they were sick Whoa, they had a cold or something. I know that's intense And that it is it's intense and you have to carry like a vial of liquid with you everywhere you go and so he In theory worked with a pharmacist, although everybody worked with a pharmacist

when they made these medicines or a doctor or somebody. And he started adding menthol to hard candies. He also distinguished his a little bit by adding some honey and some licorice to give them a slightly different flavor. And honey, as we've talked about on the show before, has been associated with like health and medicine for a long time. In an addition, he made him kind of yellow and most cough candies, cough drops at the time

were red. So these were all distinguishing factors. So he started selling these Ludens' menthol cough drops five cents a pack in 1881, and he helped boost the sales by actually going around to railroad workers and giving them out for free. It's a kind of viral marketing. I just looked at some, I didn't realize that Ludens did. Whenever I think Ludens, I always think of the wild cherry flavor, which aren't not mentholated, and that's what I always think of when I think of Ludens, but I guess that they've got the wild cherry flavor, which aren't not mintylated. And that's what I always think of when I think of Ludens,

but I guess that they've got some mintylated kinds to. If you get into the cofftops, I mean, that's what you'll find within brands. There's a lot of variety of like the ones that have some sort of medicinal substance in them, and then they have other flavors and like. Halls gets buckwheels that don't have anything in them. Halls is like hard outside outside and then a gooey center

and is loaded with CBD oil and tastes like banana mango. It's wild. They got a lot of different varieties. It's funny you should mention halls. Oh, okay. Because around the same time that Luton was moving out of his family kitchen and opening his own factory so that he could keep making in addition to his Luton's mental cough drops, which were becoming very popular

in which he was selling a lot of. He was still making like candy and chocolate and marshmallows and all that kind of stuff. So he had this whole Luton's candy factory where he was also making cough drops. At the same time, that was happening over in the UK. There's another pair of candy-making brothers who took the Mario brothers. No, no, no. The whole brothers, Thomas and Norman, who had been running the Hall's Brothers company since 1893, initially making jam and then expanding into like some caromels and some other candies. But by the 1920s, with cough drops being very popular

in the US and with Luden doing the menthol thing and the Smith brothers by now had added menthol to their product and they got wind of all this and by 1927, Holes also introduced their own flavored cough drop. This one also had menthol, had eucalyptus in it. Mentholeptus, you've heard of it. Yeah.

Yep. And they were very popular in the UK. And by 1950, they had actually made their way to the US, and we're kind of taking over the US market even. The halls, cough drops, became so popular. And there were issues with reasons that the Smith Brothers brand was declining in things. But by the 1950s, halls was extremely popular in the US.

And also, do you remember one time when Jeff Goldblum apparently choked on a halls on television? No. I didn't know this thing. I don't know. It was like a side note when the articles I was reading, he's okay though, so don't worry about Jeff Goldblum. I did not know that that happened to Jeff Goldblum.

I'm happy to hear that he's all right. All right, so you ready to head to the billing department? I mean, that's right. I'm taking control. I did a research project. I'm just as much an expert as you are. I'm taking us to the billing department. Let's go.

Get in the side car. We're taking my motorcycle that I have. Let's go. Boom. Again, I already said let's go. We just have to go there. You do? Yeah. Oh, I already said let's go, we just have to go there. You do? Yeah.

Oh, I do too. Oh, what happened? I almost choked on my hulls, golf drop. All right, there it is. It's the weirdest interview. The medicines, the medicines, the ask you let my cops fall the mouth. Are you ready to continue our tour of modern

Cockroptach? Yes. We've left the halls hall. Yes. And now we're moving on to something else. I don't know. So like I said, as time wore on in the early to mid 1900s, more and more companies wanted to get in on this action, and they were kind of all copying off of each other with like, first it was just candy and I mean mainly sugar

Was the thought that sugar sews your throat and so that's good for you And then the menthol was thrown in there and then Around the same time a Swiss company was founded by Email will helm rick trick email email Emile Emile that's my guy name said you should not pronounce it. Well, I don't know. Maybe it's pronounced differently. Okay, it's email. Go ahead.

I mean, say that email. I'm pretty sure you're right. I'm pretty sure it's email. Email email. Now you have to say email. Will he email email? email is direct just to commit to email. That's. And Daniel Rouse, senior, established their own company. Can you just read that for me? Comfessir, fabric, Richterick and Co. Laufen. Laufen. Good.

After the purchase of a small bakery in Laufen. And again, it started out as a candy making business, right? They bought this bakery and they were gonna make candies from there. Through line. Not a lot of these start with doctors. No, no, they don't. And one of the sweets that they made at their at their company was using a lot of herbs. Apparently herbs are a big thing there. It's a big thing in Switzerland. They like their herbs. They like growing them. They take great pride in the variety of herbs and how wonderfully lush their herbal fields are and all the different things they can do. And so he kind of caught on to that trend by taking a bunch of local herbs, maybe just because they looked pretty or

people like to use them a lot, he heard the names, it's not really clear that they were chosen with specific medicinal value in mind. Maybe took 13 different herbs and put them into a hard candy, into like a little sweet. And a lot of people would buy these and actually dissolve them in hot water to make like an herbal tea. Oh really? Yeah. You can imagine, you got like the sugar in there and then you've got all the herbs. Sure, yeah.

Yeah, it'd be pretty good. So he started making these, they were pretty popular and they actually started marketing them under an abbreviation of the name of the company. Oh, instead of Richterick and Ko-lofen, it was Rikola. Rikola, and this is when Rikola became popular. By the 60s, they officially changed the name of the company to Rikola, and it was known for these herbal cough drops. They were also one of the first to kind of like pioneer a sugar-free cough drop.

That was a big deal because, especially like by the 80s, the idea that sugar is bad for you or too much sugar is bad for you, that we should be concerted all about sugar. And so they started making some sugar-free as well, but the herbs were the big thing that set Ricola apart. And even now, because obviously Rikola is still around, you can visit the Rikola Gardens, they're like show gardens. In Switzerland, they have five different gardens that you can go to where they grow all the herbs

that they use in Rikola. Now they're not the herbs that they actually put in the candy, Those are somewhere else. They, and they use locally grown herbs, but these are just for show and you can go look and see all the herbs. Wow, that is, smells and, that is light to the senses. Quite a first day. Sweetie, I'm taking you to the garden where they grow the herbs for Rokola cough drops. Well, where they grow the herbs for Rekola cough drops. Well, not the actual garden that they grow the herbs for the Rekola cough drops,

but a reasonable semolcura of the, wait, where are you going? Oh, I'm sorry, because it sounded so unfathomably dull. Look, look at the pictures. Just looking at them online sometime. They're, it's gorgeous. I shan't. Absolutely gorgeous.

So, Sid, I just want to clarify now, you think that a good use of my time as a father to and husband to you and podcaster, a good use of my time is to look at pictures of the gardens where they grow ricola herbs. No way, not the actual gardens, but pictures of a reasonable smoker of the gardens where they grow racola. Herbs.

I mean, you were watching the movie Spanglish the other day. So I feel like this is a better use of your time than that. That was for Blake check. I had to watch all the James O'Brook movies. I don't want to talk about it. Okay. Now that you only use 10 herbs in their drops, and it's actually, if you've noticed, they're on the package.

If you think about the Rikola bag, I don't know if it occurs to you right away when you look at it, at least it didn't mean that like, oh, this is what's in it. We're just kind of nice. You know, there's just pictures. They're pretty. That way you can make your own at home.

Good luck. It's a closely guarded recipe. Okay. It's quite secret. I mean, here are all the ingredients, but still, how to put them together, that's the key. They were obviously- I want to's the key. They were obviously... A lot of them was made up.

They were obviously smaller brands that were growing during this time period. And some of them that may be outdated, it's hard, like you go into the stories, you can read the stories of every cough drop. That's how you know it's a patent medicine. Most medicines are like, we needed to make a medicine, and so we spent a bunch of money in a lab

until we made a medicine for something. The stories behind patent medicines are always like, so a wandering, traveling salesman came into my restaurant and traded me a recipe. There are always stories like this. So if you look at some of the smaller brands have some of these stories as well, and some of them claimed to have been around a little bit

longer than Smith Brothers and to call into question who was first but Fisherman's friend is one of those. Yeah those are those are the strong ones. Those will mess you up. Yes and they were created by a pharmacist James Loftouse. It was originally a liquid in 1865 and then at some point after that they were transitioned into Laws inches. A lot of these came from like cough syrup. I'm assuming you didn't start off calling them fishermen's friends. That would have been a wild pulse. These are for fishermen. I made them for you. Well they were made for fishermen. Now they weren't initially. It was the

fishermen themselves. So supposedly the story goes that the fishermen started calling them friends. Okay. Do you have any friends? And can I have some friends? Do you have any extra friends? And anyway, that's, oh, it's sweet. That's why they started calling them that. Apparently used by Margaret Thatcher, famously. All right. Yes, fishermen's friends.

There's also, man, I love these British Laws and Judges. Victory V Laws and Judges. Have you ever seen these? No. It's a killer package. There are British licorice lozenges that have been made since the mid 1800s by Dr. Edward Smith.

The original formulation that Dr. Smith came up with, again, it probably started as some sort of syrup and then became a lozenges, but the original formulation wasn't just for cough, and we know this because it contained licorice, ether, and chloroform. Dang. So intense, I would say, an intense Losage

used for whatever ailed you, whatever you didn't wanna be awake for. You could use it for. Eventually he did start targeting them to coughs. They were called the, you know, a victory V cough, Lawsenge. And today they don't have chloroform and ether in them huge in case you're in case you're curious in case you were worried. You can some of these you can find like it's funny. I was looking to see like, could I get those victory V Lawsenges? I, they're very expensive, I think here, I imagine they wouldn't be in the

UK, but like here, if I'm trying to buy them, it's like, this one was like $33 for 15 of them or something, which seems excessive. I'm not going to get that. But as I was looking, I was looking at the reviews, and this is my favorite, this Amazon review of Victory V Laws and Chas, the cost is like chemotherapy. Anyone who had spent this kind of money on such an over-the-counter medicine should see a witch doctor if they haven't already.

I can hire two people to breathe for me at half the price. There's so many questions I have. That person has a lot of free time, I feel like. And they also can hire people to breathe for them, which seems flawed. Yeah, let me not always say. Medically flawed. In the 30s, we got sucrets, VIX came out with their cough drops.

There was also a brand called Frog in Your Throat. You can find the packages for this all over, the very popular images that you can find, but as far as finding the laws and just probably not, I did like their tagline, the frog in your throat said, innocent and immediate refreshment for your throat. Innocent. Those were released in 1901, and they only were sugar.

They're just candy, nothing at them, nothing that, and all the while those Smith brothers were trying to compete with all this. They added vitamin A and the 50s, it's just like another stab at like, is this anything? Do you like this maybe? This is healthier. Do you need this? The company traded ownership multiple times and by the 70s,

like they lost the branding and then eventually they just kind of fell off the shelves. Yeah. In 2014, the company was purchased by a UK-based company to bring production back in the Chicago-based factory. And I found these articles about like, they're gonna bring back this candy or what this cough drop candy. And everybody's very excited. They're gonna use the old school Smith Brothers brand

with the two heads on it, except they were giving them like a hipster makeover. Great. I mean, the long beards. Of course. It's perfect, right? They look like hipsters. And so they brought back three original flavors,

cherry, honey lemon, and warm apple pie, and they just didn't catch on. It just underperformed. And so now they're almost impossible to find again. Even though they were on the market as recently as like 2017, they're really hard to find. There are still. I say it's a bummer. It doesn't actually matter. No, just different. There's just a lot of cough drops as the thing. I mean, you know, we've covered some of the major ones, but obviously they're endless numbers of cough drops. Here in the

US again, let's stuff like, especially I always think of the halls, commercials, the halls of medicine that were made out of those bricks and halls. And they used to say in their commercials, halls is real medicine. Which is something real medicine often has to say out loud. Which is interesting when apparently there are places where halls are eaten as candy. I assume these are places where they've never heard of chocolate. Or real candy. Yeah, no real candy there. So is it?

That's the question that at the end of all this, is it candy? Sounds like it. Or is it medicine? I mean, it's not medicine because it doesn't treat anything, right? They don't have a lot of evidence behind them. They were made as candy, right? Like, nobody made these with the intention that they were actually gonna fix something at first.

There were definitely being made in home kitchens, laws and jizz with honey and things that, you know, back before you would get your medicine from a doctor and you made your medicine at home, you know, so they were based on like observation that seems to help with a cough, this seems to sue the sore throat, that kind of thing. But there was no study that said this was the way to do it.

Mynthol, which is in a lot of cough drops, not all, as you said, but is in a lot, has been shown in some studies, small studies, to increase your cough threshold. And what they do to figure that out is they have a group of people that get some menthol and they have a group of people who don't get any menthol. And then they challenge them both with something that should trigger a cough. Like I think it's like capsaicin inhaled, like chili pepper, you have to inhale and that

should make you cough. And what they say is that if you have menthol beforehand It will take more of that to make you cough than if you don't Oh, okay other studies have not shown that Well, all right, so and they're all small so it's inconsistent. So it's hard to say does it help maybe or maybe it doesn't It does make you feel like your airways are more open This is interesting. This is the, and we've talked about VIXVAPO rub a little bit before.

You get the sensation that you've opened up your airways, subjectively, meaning that objectively you have not. But people say they feel better. And I mean, if you're just riding out of cold, that doesn't seem necessarily dangerous. They do seem more helpful than placebo in soothing a sore throat. So if we're not focused so much on the cough part of the cough drop, but like the throat loss and part of it, if they use something like benzocaine, which is what's in sepicole,

they do seem to somewhat numb and soothe your throat. And there are other ones that do that. And sucrose itself has been shown to do that a little bit. So just the sugar could be soothing and numbing your throat. And maybe the soothe less irritated throat you wouldn't cough as much. Maybe. Again, these are all very small studies.

And this is, I mean, it suggests this. And I think it's easy to say it's something that's a topical anesthetic is going to numb your throat a little bit. Right. Sure. But are there risks? Oh.

Well, it's a question you should ask. Okay, are there risks? I mean, if they're medicine, you got to know the risks. Okay. So when it comes to benzocaine, there is a very rare risk. And when I say very rare, I mean very, very rare. So I don't want to freak everybody out about using cough drops.

But there is a risk of something called methemoglobinemia. And it affects the way that hemoglobin binds oxygen and delivers it to yourselves. And if you have this reaction to things like benzocaine and lidocaine and those kinds of topical anesthetics, it can be very bad. But it's extremely rare. In one study, they found it to be a prevalence of like

.06%. Probably not gonna happen. It's probably not gonna happen, but it is a reason to know that like, if you have ever had that reaction, I mean, there's gotta be somebody out there and you wanna use a cough drop that has that in it, please don't, like check the ingredients.

Because some of them do have these topical anesthetics. And so they're not advised for like very young children or people who are sick or have immunocompromised that kind of thing. As for the menthol, there was a lot of concern that could, because menthol, if you take enough of it, can be toxic. So there was concern if we have menthol and cough drops and when people are treating them like candy and not medicine is that dangerous, right?

Could you take too much menthol? Well, the dose you would need to take to hurt yourself with menthol is a thousand milligrams per kilogram. The average cough drop is between three and 10 milligrams of menthol. So let's say I weigh 65 kilos. And even if we assume I'm using the strongest ones, the 10 milligram menthol drops, I would need to eat about 6,500 cough drops a day to odon menthol.

No, but it's even getting closer to that said. So I mean, it's a reason that they found like cases of people who literally ate two bags of cough drops a day for like 20 years and got sick. Right. Oh, just that much. Yeah, but I, and so I would say like, if it, if it does have a medicinal property, I wouldn't eat them nonstop. But using them occasionally, you're not going to overdose on menthol. Now, there was a study just last

year that came out that suggested that perhaps if you use mentholated cough drops too much, you'll actually increase your cough. Oh no. Like a rebound effect. And so they fixed a bunch of people's coughs by having them stop using cough drops. Oh no. I don't know. It was just one study. It was just last year. But it's a reason that if you're using cough drops non-stop and you still seem to have to use them. Like take a take a cough Maybe I have. Take a cough drop vacation, see what happens. And then of course the ones with sugar have sugar. And if there's a reason you shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar, which, I mean, none of us should be eating a lot of sugar.

But I mean, if you're a diabetic, you know, that's something to check. They definitely have sugar. And of course there are sugar free ones, but that comes with their own set of issues. Diary. Right. Folks, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We appreciate it. We've ended this episode as we do all episodes of Salt Bones talking about diarrhea.

One of the things that taxpayers for the use of our song medicines is the intern algebra program. I'm in to ask you there, Justin. Do you think that William Goldman was right? What was he that he said exactly about cough drops in the that true love is best thing in the world except for cough drops? Yeah, that's only in the book, right? That's only in the book. There's that whole thing about mutton lettuce to made us say much is in the Billy crystal headed to the Borsch Bell on that one. No, thank you, Billy. Let's just keep it to the books, okay, bud?

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I'm not, they're pretty good, I would say. Not better than love, but good stuff. I've never been a huge fan of cough drops, so I guess I'll take the true love. Fair enough. Hey, we wrote a book. It's called The Solvings Book.

It's illustrated by Cindy Sister Taylor. Smirral, and you can buy it anywhere you buy books. If you want to do that, I think you'd like it. If you like this show, I think you'd like that. I think that is gonna do it for us, right? Yes, that's what I think so. Yes, I think. I believe so.

Oh, we are going to be, if you're coming to see us next month, that's in November, we're going to be, if you're going coming to see us next month, that's in November. We're going to be in Chicago on November 14th and Minneapolis November 15th. If you're going to be at one of those shows, take it as a show without but if you have any ideas in the area, let us know. Yeah, we always look for topics for solbans that relate to the places we go. That is going to do for us. So until next time, my name is Joseph McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And it's always don't draw a hole in your head. Alright!

Maximumfun.org Comedy and Culture Artist Oat? Audience Supported Hello, my name is Tusk Henderson and I am an outdoorsman. Are you looking for a new comedy podcast? This month's episode of Beef and Dairy Network Podcast has, as its guest, the wonderful Nick Offerman playing the part of Tusk Henderson,

adventurer and outdoorsman. Think about fitting yourself a month's worth of provisions and a half-tun cow into a kayak. So if you've never listened to the show before, this might be a good place to start. I string a bow string between her horn tips and I can fire a spear off the top of her head and it took in some very delicious cod. So if you're after a new comedy podcast, why not try the Beef and Dairy Network for Maximum Fun? Download it now! You flip a cow upside down and they make an excellent toboggan.

the beef and dairy network from Maximum Fun. Download it now! You flip a cow upside down, they make an excellent toboggan.