PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 08/17/2008

Castor Oil & Toilet Paper

My childhood illnesses were not normal flu and ear infections and sniffles like those I helped my children through. We had things like jigger bites and mosquito bites, malaria, and dysentery. We took a very bitter little pill every night to help us keep from getting malaria, but occasionally we got it anyway. We knew people with huge tropical ulcers and tuberculosis. One of the ladies who lived nearby had lost most of her fingers and toes because of leprosy. When I was about 7, I caught hepatitis A (we called it "infectious hepatitis") from someone else who had it, and I was very very sick for about a month. Thinking back on it now from a mom's perspective, I can imagine how difficult that must have been for my mother, because at times she was not sure I would ever get better.

We did not know anything about Tylenol or decongestants or any of the other drugs we can get so easily now, but there was one thing we knew ALL about, and that was Castor Oil! My father was absolutely positive that, no matter what invisible bug was attacking his body, it could be flushed out once and for all with a good dose of Castor Oil!

And we children also learned first hand of its germ-flushing capabilities! How we hated the taste of that stuff, but Daddy had come up with a solution for how to get it down in one big gulp. He took a clear glass custard dish and filled it about 1/4 full with water in which he dissolved some baking soda (already sounds yummy, doesn't it!) Then he opened the Castor Oil and poured in a big dollop, right in the middle of that soda water. You could see the oily patch floating on the surface. ("That baking soda will cut the oil," he would assure us as we tried to put off that awful moment!) We knew just what to do, because we had watched him do it so many times. He would stand with the custard dish in one hand, poised for swallowing, and his left hand on his hip. Then back his head would go and he would gulp it down. No matter how much that soda water "cut the oil," there was no disguising that awful horrible taste! Then he would stand looking at us, and the first burp would come, and the taste with it....AGGGHHH! I can almost taste it now! "U-buh-buh-buh-buh!" he would shiver with that burp!
At the first sign of illness, we all took Castor Oil!

This wonderful treatment did not end with actually getting that oil down (and keeping it down)! About an hour later, we did not dare leave the house because of the extreme....ahem!...VERY extreme laxative effects of this wonder drug! It would be impossible to describe how very, very flushed those germs were...along with every other blessed thing that could possibly have been retained in our little intestines! We were clean as a whistle when this whole procedure was over!
Thus, you now know why the bottle of Castor Oil would indeed be only half the picture if "the roll" were not beside it!

(Now if you click on that picture and read the label on the bottle carefully, you will see that the manufacturers make the preposterous claim that this product is "Tasteless & Odorless!" The very fact that they felt it necessary to put that on the label tells you something! How many things do we buy that assure us, right on the label, that they are "tasteless and odorless?" 'Nuff said!)
.