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Preventable Diseases of Children: Collier

It contains opium in the form of morphine sulphate. There is little doubt but that this nostrum has caused the death of many children and has done incalculable injury to others. Collier's Weekly-to which much credit is due for its exposure of the nostrums which are such a menace to the lives and health of the American people-tells the following story: "A prominent New York lawyer was asked by his office scrubwoman to buy a ticket to some association ball. He replied: 'How can you go to these affairs, Nora, when you have two young children at home?" 'Sure, they're all right,' she returned blithely. 'Just wan tayspoonful of Winslow's and they lay like the dead till marnin'." " The great demand for soothing sirup by mothers who wish their babies to "stay put" has produced a rival to the late Mrs. Winslow under the touching name of "Kopp's Baby's Friend." This also contains opium.

Collier's states that it is made of sweetened water and morphine sulphate. It is well styled "the king of baby soothers," since it is said to contain in each teaspoonful enough morphine to kill an infant. Morphine should be given to a child under ten years of age only in very rare instances and never except under the direction of a physician. Read carefully the following list of such preparations and what they contain. This was compiled by the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture: Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Sirup, morphine sulphate.

Children's Comfort, morphine sulphate.