Family Tree

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Cod-Liver Oil - The Cure All

Oil for the Children

Give them oil - cod-liver oil. It's curious to see the result.

Give it to the peevish, fretful child and he laughs. Give it to the pale, anemic child, and his face becomes rosy and full of health. Take a flat chested child, or a child that has stopped growing, give him the oil, and he will grow big and strong like the rest.

This is not a new scheme. It has been done for years. Of course you must use the right oil, Scott's Emulsion is the one.

Scott's Emulsion neither looks not tastes like oil because we are so careful in making it pleasant to take.

Apparently my mother didn't know about Scott's oil because the cod-liver oil she gave me was not tasty. The purpose was to put "meat on my bones," to gain weight. Now, I need it to help with weight loss.

11 Benefits of Cod-Liver Oil

Advertisement from Brookhaven Leader Newspaper
April 09, 1902

9 comments:

  1. I think I would ask to be exempted from taking this in any form :) But I do love the old ads!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I take a fish oil pill with my vitamin regiment. It goes down rather easily.

      Delete
  2. To my knowledge, we never used it. Castor oil was a different story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Castor oil was the main one used in my childhood home. We didn't like neither, no matter how much sugar mama mixed with the oils.

      Delete
  3. We didn't use castor oil but had a teaspoon of cod liver oil every morning. Also meant to put meat on my bones and make the legs grow straight. The capsules are way easier to take. I also had to take a tonic. Blech. I was a sickly kid.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was sickly and skinny, a bad combo in a family that valued plumpness and considered you not healthy if you were not plump.

      Delete
  4. My mother believed in Father John. It didn't taste TOO awful, - kind of pepperminty, if I remember correctly.
    On the other hand, we were often given castor oil when sick. Warmed castor oil at that. The smell of that warm oil still resonates. Mama would admonish, "you'd better not throw it up..." You'd swallow it (hesitantly), and it would just rise back up in your throat. Jeez, what a memory!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My mother would give us orange soda to wash down the castor Oil. I was in my forties before I could drink orange soda. Sometimes she would pour it on a spoon with sugar. It was awful no matter how she tried to make it amenable to the taste buds.

      Delete