Look, I know you’re frustrated about not being able to sleep, but I don’t do pediatrics – I’m sorry. No, Darren Sproles doesn’t count! But I empathize. I do. Teething’s no fun for anybody. I could potentially refer you to my buddy, Dr. Earl Bradley, down in Delaware… but I haven’t heard from him for a while, so not quite sure what he’s up to these days. In the meantime, maybe this can help you get some further information while you figure out how to get Junior to stop crying. And hell, maybe you and I should go play golf today – at least you can get out of the house and away from all the chewing for a little while.

MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP: THE TASTIEST POISON THERE EVER WAS!

What are the positives of this treatment?

We know that with young children, the teething process is among the most frustrating times to be a parent, alongside with birth, learning to walk, learning to talk, elementary school, middle school, puberty, high school, and just about any point up until your child is about 25. Some physicians believe that there is a brief grace period for parents that lasts for about six weeks around age nine, but these preliminary studies on the phases of parenting are ongoing and have produced no definitive conclusions just yet.

Regardless of the experience of teething on parents, it’s clearly even more taxing on the children… pain and inflammation are ever-present symptoms of emerging baby teeth out of gums. No wonder it’s a problem that parents have continually tried to tackle throughout history.

We’ve seen a whole variety of unique and strange treatments for teething pain over the last three thousand years. For one, the ancient Greeks and Romans used to provide chewing necklaces, often using coral, wolf’s teeth, semi-precious stones, ivory, donkey hair, plant roots, or other strange ingredients. Sometimes these ingredients were also used as amulets, protecting infants against the evil demons that were clearly inflicting such awful pain on their little mouths.

In 16th-century France, barber-surgeon Ambroise Paré came up with the idea to lance babies’ gums in order to promote “free passage” for teeth to emerge – a treatment which is now considered almost universally barbaric, and yet still persisted into the 1930s in some parts of the world.

As the nature of teething was not readily understood – and it was a commonly-held belief that teething resulted in a whole host of other ailments, including convulsions and eventually death – in Victorian England, teething was wrongfully attributed as the cause of death in about 5% of all infant mortality cases and up to 7% in toddler mortality cases. These alarmingly high numbers, despite their complete inaccuracy, caused parents, physicians, scientists and quacks to all work harder to find a suitable treatment for teething.

Enter “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup”. Supposedly invented by a pediatric nurse, Charlotte N. Winslow of Bangor, Maine, this patent medicine was mass-produced by her son-in-law Jeremiah Curtis and his business partner Benjamin Perkins beginning in 1845. Marketed as a teething treatment, it was enormously popular and financially successful – by 1868, they were apparently selling 1.5 million bottles of the solution annually across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The syrup contained a variety of ingredients, but most notably morphine and alcohol; as such, it absolutely would have been successful in its function as a painkiller. Due to the opium used to produce morphine, it was also an effective treatment for diarrhea, as constipation remains an extremely common side effect of opiate-based painkillers.

As it turns out, the syrup had about 65 milligrams of morphine per fluid ounce. A single teaspoon of this syrup contained enough morphine to be equivalent to 20 drops of laudanum – and doctors recommended that the average 6-month-old be given no more than 2-3 drops at any time. In all, a single teaspoon of Soothing Syrup was enough to kill a small child several times over. And, of course, we can’t forget about the alcohol content either.

Thousands of infants would be given some of Mrs. Winslow’s patent medicine, gently drift off to sleep, and never wake up again. Thousands more would go through extreme addiction and withdrawal symptoms.

What are some real-life examples of this treatment? 

By 1911, the American Medical Association officially condemned Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, though the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act forced drug manufacturers to list their ingredients on the packaging of all medications… which necessitated a change in the syrup’s formula in order to reduce the amount of morphine used. Despite physicians speaking out against the product (which received the nickname of “baby killer” in the early 20th century), Mrs. Winslow’s syrup remained available for purchase well into the 1930s. Because the connection between the syrup and opiate overdose and withdrawal was not established for decades after the product launch, we have no possible way of estimating the number of deaths this patent medicine caused.

While use of Mrs. Winslow’s fell by the wayside, other teething treatments – including those using calomel, a mercury-based product we’ve discussed before – persisted until far later into the 20th century. Medicated teething gels were also common for decades – though as it turns out, the benzocaine used in these products can cause notable oxygen depletion and death in small patients, and they are no longer permitted for sale or use on young children as of 2018.

How can we improve this treatment for the future?

As it turns out, chamomile may well actually be an effective natural pain reliever for infants – the plant contains an antioxidant called apigenin, which helps to relax patients, lower anxiety, and bring on sleep. As Baby Orajel no longer contains benzocaine, it, and other similar products, are now using a chamomile extract as a replacement, and now market their products as homeopathic treatments rather than pharmaceutical.

A shame about those discontinued products, though. Good thing I have a little secret stockpile of the good stuff to take the edge off as needed, though. Come by my place after golf today – we’ll get out some of my personal reserve of Soothing Syrup to enjoy in the hot tub. I think I have a couple of 1902 vintages somewhere in the back of the wine cellar.

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Information for this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.