The Correct Dosage

            When I was a boy Doctors and Doctoring was much different than it is now.  Today, when I need medical attention I go to the clinic where I am treated, explain my symptoms to the Doctor, who listens closely, checks my heart, lungs, blood pressure and pulse, and then prescribes whatever medicine will cure me, writes a prescription which I take to the Pharmacy, receive the medicine, return home, take it twice or four times per day as directed, and usually by the next day feel much better.

            There was a time about a half century ago when the Doctor came to you rather than you going to the clinic.  At that time, when I was a teen-ager and became ill, my Mother or Father would either make a telephone call or go see the Doctor and make an appointment for the Doctor to make a house call.  The Doctor would then come to the house carrying his black bag and perform much the same way as modern Doctors do in the clinic.  Often the Doctor would have the required medicine in the black bag, and would also act as the Pharmacist.

            In even earlier times in my family all the Doctoring was performed by my Mother with my Father assisting and advising her.  I do not know whether this was because we were too poor to call the Doctor to us, or if perhaps there were no Doctors close enough to call.  We lived in very small towns and villages in Eastern Oklahoma.  When I or my sisters were sick my parents would get out their green medical book, look up our symptoms, and apply whatever home remedy seemed applicable.  They were apparently successful, because we all survived, and I cannot remember ever seeing a real Doctor until I was a freshman in High School.

            My Mother also practiced preventive medicine.  She would say such aphorisms as ‘An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away’ often.  Unfortunately, in that time during World War II apples were scarce where we lived.  Usually at Christmas a relative would send us a crate of oranges, but the rest of the year was rather fruitless.  One preventive medicine which Mother used was cod liver oil—awful stuff.  On a regular basis, probably just before our Saturday night bath in the wash tub, Mother would get out the bottle of cod liver oil, and each of us children would take a spoonful.  I never knew what it was for, or what crippling disease it warded off.  I just knew—ugh, it was not to be avoided. Cod liver oil was not as awful though as the dreaded castor oil.  Nothing tasted as terrible as castor oil, but, if you were stopped up, and Mother always knew, it was time for some castor oil.  It was also believed by many in those times that it was a good idea once a year in the spring to clean your system out, and how was this done:  castor oil.  I don’t know what this prevented, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t cure anything.

            Eventually my Mother or perhaps my Father worked out a method of self-dosage for us children.  Rather than forcing down the castor oil over our strenuous objections, they worked out a system where we could self-medicate.  It was only many years later that I understood how this was accomplished. It was done with Hershey Bars and milk chocolate.  My Mother loved chocolate.  After the war ended occasionally my Father would bring her a Hershey Bar home from the store.  She would always share some of it with us children. It was really, really good in those sugar starved times, and I’ll never forget how it looked covered in aluminum foil in the brown wrapper—yum.  I, and my sisters, always asked for one more piece.

            If you are familiar with an over the counter medicine called Ex-Lax you may know that sixty years ago it looked quite similar to a Hershey Bar—dark chocolate wrapped in aluminum foil in a brown package.  I must have been constipated.  One of my parents—I have always wondered which, and I intend to ask when I see them in Heaven--conceived this clever scheme.  Remembering how much I enjoyed milk chocolate, they placed the Ex-Lax/Hershey Bar in the ice box on a shelf at child’s eye level.  They also opened the end of the package so the chocolate was visible and tempting.  The next time I went to the ice box for a drink of water there it was.  I could see that only one piece had been broken off and eaten.  Remember how the Hershey Bars were segmented? Iershey Bars were H thought that no one would notice if there was just one more segment missing. I took a piece.  I stole my medicine that day, and it tasted just as I remembered.  It was so-o good. I told my sister Joann about it and I think she had some also.  My younger sister Mary Kay informs me that she also fell for the Ex-Lax ploy.

            Apparently the Hershey Bar had the desired result.  The ‘Doctor’ must have been well satisfied, because when I went back for another piece the next day the ‘Hershey Bar’ was gone.  One piece must have been the correct dosage.