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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Dr Collis Brown's cough medicine


liverpool annie

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I was reading that the comfort in World War One was Dr Collis Brown's cough medicine ........ it contained Codeine Morphine and Cocaine ..... and that cough medicine got the soldiers through the horrors of the trenches !

Has anybody else heard that .... or is that common knowledge that I just didn't hear yet ??

Annie :)

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Collis Brown's chlorodyne was 'sworn by'!!! in Liverpool when I was a child

Gill

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I well remember receiving doses of Collis Browns as a child.....it was great stuff!

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Back in the 1960s, my husband would not go on a foreign holiday without it! He maintained that it settled his stomach - which to his annoyance was easily deranged by foreign food.

Maybe it was a habit that he acquired from his slightly hypochondriac dad, who had served with the ASC in WWI.

Later the stuff was withdrawn from over-the-counter sale.

Angela

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What I'd really like to know is .... were the soldiers in WW1 using drugs etc to get them through the horrors ? ..... I'm asking because so many of my soldiers had a really hard time when they came home .... and more than a few were alcoholics ... could the medicine have been part of the cause ??

Annie

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Collis Brown's chlorodyne was 'sworn by'!!! in Liverpool when I was a child

Gill

Was there any connection with the 'medicinal compound' from 'Lily the Pink'?

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Grantham Drill Hall (erected 1911 and in use as an Auxiliary Military Hospital between 19th November 1914 and 28 February 1919) was the scene of one of The Scaffold's memorable gigs.

Didn't you just need to know that?

Annie, I'll ask an analytical chemist whom I know very well and who is clued up on the composition of old medicines.

Gwyn

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  • 11 years later...
On 19/12/2008 at 23:22, liverpool annie said:

What I'd really like to know is .... were the soldiers in WW1 using drugs etc to get them through the horrors ?

I don't think that what today we call "hard drugs" were widely available without a medical prescription, but there was certainly a market for them among the troops. One of the three British officers executed in WW1 was thought to have been involved in it, although he was actually executed for murder, as he shot one of the military policemen who arrested him.

 

Rum was also issued to the troops (and to sailors aboard ship) before action or in cold weather.

 

Although its predecessor, morphine, had been known since classical times, heroin was developed in the 1890s by the German firm of Bayer, who also developed aspirin at around the same time. It was then thought that aspirin was the more dangerous drug of the two.

 

Ron

Edited by Ron Clifton
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The newspapers pick up a cholera remedy in 1854, Browne with a "e".

 

Dr. Collis Browne's Cholera Remedy. MBARRON, CHEMIST, 37, Winchoomb begs to state that, owing to the many atm and urgent entreaties lank ...

Published: Wednesday 23 August 1854
Newspaper: Cheltenham Examiner
County: Gloucestershire, England

 

A bit later in 1886 the cough cure appears

 

ALL RoUND reductions in DRUGS, PATENT MEDICINES, and GROCERIES are made. DR. BROWN'S COUGH CURE, liy for )'.'•'d.. M for 2/3 COD Llv'Li; OIL (almost tasteie. s;, extra size bottles, 16 for 9d.. pint 3 6 and qu ...

Published: Saturday 16 October 1886
Newspaper: Leeds Times

 

Dave

 

 

 

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