Raising a child has always been a very difficult responsibility for parents. I can’t imagine how hard it was for parents in the ancient times. Thankfully, it’s a bit easier now thanks to the huge number of books and materials about parenting. But not all tips will do us nor our kids good, like these ones from the 1800s, which Mental Floss compiles.
In the 19th century, it was common practice to quiet a fussy or sick child with "medicines" like Stickney & Poor’s Paregoric Syrup—a substance that not only contained more than a tenth of a gram of opium per ounce, but that was almost 50 percent alcohol! No wonder it was able to deliver on its promise of calming children down. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only toxic remedy that parents embraced in the days of yore: Kids were regularly made to ingest turpentine in order to rid themselves of tapeworms, while mercury was believed to be a cure for dysentery or edema.
Check out the other bad parenting tips over at this video.
(Video Credit: Mental Floss/ YouTube)
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I can kinda see the logic behind opium and alcohol to calm kids. The bit about turpentine and mercury tho - yikes. How many people grew up with terrible side effects to that. Depending on the type of mercury that's extremely bad.
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