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Preventable Diseases of Children: Soothing

DON'T DRUG YOUR BABY Soothing Sirups. There is no such thing as a harmless soothing sirup, teething powder or "baby's friend", as such drugs are ironically called by unprincipled manufacturers. This is a fact which all right-thinking mothers should take to heart and seek to impress upon others who are responsible for the care of infants. Hundreds of thousands of children have been poisoned to death in infancy by such compounds. Other children have survived their use with weakened constitutions, or have become the victims of drug habits in later life from the effects of these mixtures. The chief active agents in most of these compounds are opium, morphine, heroin, codein, chloroform and chloral hydrate-all active poisons and especially deadly to children. a Since the passage of the Pure Food Law, the manufacturers of preparations containing habit-forming drugs, or drugs dangerous to life, have been compelled to print on the label list of these substances.

Hence mothers should read carefully the labels of any cough mixtures, soothing sirups or other preparations recommended for children and discard them if they are found to contain any of these ingredients. You may safely regard with grave suspicion the manufacturer, dealer physician who tells you that these substances are not likely to occur, in the widely advertised preparations, in quantities dangerous to your baby's health or life. or Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Sirup is a well known preparation with which thousands of helpless infants have been drugged into insensibility by ignorant or indifferent mothers and nurses for more than a generation.