Sugar rots your teeth

Babies make splendid subjects for placebo effects by proxy.  Dogs, horses and cows will do pretty much as well (the rest of the animal kingdom rarely rate a mention). So it's no surprise to find some outright quackery amongst the possibly efficacious teething remedies in a high street chemist.

Mothers may enjoy ease of mind in the knowledge that these powders are reliable and contain nothing harmful.  Charged solely with a preparation of a selected part of the plant Matricaria, they do not contain Calomel or other Mercury Compounds.

These are, in fact, lactose and nothing more.  There's a lot of fun to be had taking the mickey out of pharmacies selling sugar pills (it's all over the internet), but that's not what is interesting here.  Consider the language: it's not from this century, is it?  Calomel? How many people know what calomel is, or know that it has a long history (along with, say, arsenic) of use in medicine as a theatrical poison in the days of heroic medicine.  This reassurance that these powders contain no calomel sounds like a warning from the nineteenth century.

It probably is.

Ashtons and Parsons are an old firm of homeopaths, dating back as far as 1867 (so @quackwriter assures me).  In the Wellcome Library you will find an old pamphlet of theirs from ca. 1910.  In the endpages are some advertisements for their more popular remedies of the day, including these Infant Powders.  The 1910 advert proclaims that:

The Ashton and Parsons Infant Powders are intended to ease pain and sooth the child; check stomach disorders; correct the motions; relieve fever, restlessness, fretfulness and similar troubles incidental to the teething period; and are useful in delayed or unduly prolonged dentition.

This has been updated for a 2011 audience as follows:

Ashton and Parsons Infants’ Powders are intended to soothe the child; check stomach disorders; correct the motions; relieve restlessness, fretfulness and similar troubles incidental to the teething period; and are useful in delayed or unduly prolonged dentition.

So, in 2011 we get much the same text as my grandmother's mother did.  It doesn't stop there; consider the dosing recommendations from 2011:

How to use

For children under six months:

            Half a powder

Above six months:

            One powder; dry on the tongue, night and morning.

When the child is very restless or fretful, the dose can be repeated every one, two or three hours if necessary until improvement.

Compare that with the 1910 version:

Dose: Under six months half a Powder, above six months one Powder, dry on the tongue, night and morning.  When the child is very restless, fretful or feverish, the dose can be repeated every one, two or three hours if necessary, until improvement.

It's only the safety information that seems to vary from century to century. From 1910:

REMEMBER: These Powders are guaranteed to be perfectly harmless

While today, we are warned:

Keep all medicines out of the reach of children.