My Catch-All Diagnosis By Linda Stowe
I blame a lot of my everyday ailments on my sinuses and for all I know my sinuses have nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, whenever my nose is stuffy or I have a headache, I just say I have a sinus infection. It’s my catch-all diagnosis. Whatever my medical issue is, it is probably not my sinuses. It could be allergies. Or maybe I need to change my furnace filter. Even the wildfires in Canada. Sinuses is just an easier answer.
I think I got that one-size-fits-all approach from my mother. I don’t know how other mothers went about patching up kids that spent their days scraping knees or going without a coat, but my mom’s go-to arsenal was Mercurochrome and Vick’s VapoRub. I also got a lot of enemas, which I never understood but apparently it was a trend for a while. While I may have adopted my mother’s approach, the only one of her treatments I kept was the VapoRub because, you know, it’s good for sinuses.
Wordle guess words: about, sinus, issue
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Well. First things first. I am so glad that Mercurochrome is no longer a thing. I had way too much of that as a kid. Now for the rest of the family comparisons. We never got Vick’s VapoRub. Whenever we were sick, Dad would put a little humidifier in our room, which made funny noises all night long. And finally, thank goodness the enema thing never happened in our household.
But back to Mercurochrome. It is one of those nostalgic, but slightly alarming, childhood products. I was coated in that bright red liquid for the better part of my first 12 years.
Mercurochrome is also known as merbromin. It is an antiseptic and was invented in 1918 by a New York surgeon named Hugh H. Young. His goal was to create a fast, easy topical disinfectant that didn’t sting like iodine.
Did it sting anyway? Oh. Yes. Yes, it did.
Mercurochrome was very popular because it dried quickly and it didn’t require a bandage.
For decades, everyone used it.
But it disappeared. Why? Because Mercurochrome contains a small amount of mercury. As such, there were more and more concerns about mercury toxicity. So in 1998, the U.S. FDA reclassified it as “not generally recognized as safe and effective.”
With that, manufacturers stopped selling it widely in the United States.
It remained legal in many other countries, and you can still find it online or in international pharmacies. But its American heyday has definitely passed. I might buy some from a foreign country, just for old time’s sake.
