M is for MEDICINE

Anything you needed to find was always inside the light green door of the corner cupboard in the kitchen. Much of its contents was housed in an old lidless tin box that had once been the home of shortbread but its original family had long since departed. Most of the medicines in this box were either tablets, powders or ointments and one had to be careful in choosing since cures for the dogs were also kept in the same enclosure. So alongside the Phensic, Aspirin and Anadin for sore heads lay Bob Martin's conditioning tablets for adults of the canine variety, distemper powder and worm powders that none of us needed. There would be plenty of unnamed tablets as well, usually a small bottle of Vick rub and a few piece of Brooklax chocolate, well past their sell by date and for that reason alone still effective in bringing constipation to a runny conclusion! A tube of Germolene antiseptic was always on hand for the times we fell when playing and its pink colour disguised the smell that emanated from the cream and tended to stay on your clothes long after the germs had been discouraged from entering the wound. Mum also kept a large bottle of orange Dettol liquid and I remember on several occasions having to bathe parts of my body in a solution of the strong smelling antiseptic, though now I can't remember why.

Although neither mum or dad were medical people they had their cures for everything and we were regularly dosed with all sorts of concoctions at the first sign of a problem. Beecham's powders were the favourite when a sniffle appeared and. mixed on a table spoon with a little Ribena, it was all down the hatch in one go, quickly followed by a very large swig of the warm blackcurrant juice to follow.

Dad was also a faithful Malt eater. He used to buy it in Moy in a large, wide, brown bottle that had a gold coloured metal screw-on cap and every night he would dip a pudding spoon into the sticky, brown mixture, rotate it a few times and emerge with a generous helping which he would then plunge throat wards and spend the next five minutes licking the dregs from the spoon that refused to leave by their own accord. For a while, we were all at it and I don't know whether it did us any good or prevented any illnesses but it sure tasted fine and sweet and certainly didn't do us any harm. Also, every day we were presented with a Haliborange tablet, a small uncannily bright orange 'sweet' that was supposed to be full of Vitamin C but tasted so bitter and looked more like a Smartie rejected for being too small and too bright.

The box was surrounded by bottles of other medicines, one of which was TCP. I still can't remember what the letters stood for though VILE would have been a better name for it. This liquid was also an antiseptic, often used as a mouthwash and often gargled at the back of the throat to stem off infection. It was so horrific and even worse if even a drop slipped by into the gullet but dad never seemed to mind at all. Alongside the TCP bottle stood a darkened glass container labelled Hydrogen Peroxide. I was later to discover, in my Science education, that such a liquid can be used to make Oxygen in the lab. My only experience was to when it was dabbed on a cold sore around my mouth and took my breath away. It wasn't used very much and the bottle lasted for years and years until I guess they threw it out. Nearby was another brown bottle containing Methylated Spirits, not the clear liquid you get in labs, but one containing a purple dye. Mum would also use this on cold sores, though the effect on the unfortunate individual was no less stressful but she also dabbed it with cotton wool on stings, though medically, I'm not sure why, apart from maybe taking the heat out of the situation. Later on I discovered, through a friend, that dipping my finger tips in meths every day helped them to harden so that when I played the guitar they hurt less. I have passed this tip on to many a budding guitarist who suffers the agony of sore finger tips in the first few weeks of practising. There were many other bits and pieces lying around in the cupboard, like an old pair of scissors, half used rolls of Elastoplast, a blue bottle of Optrex complete with eye washer, Olive oil for dad's gammy knees, a 'blue bag' to deal with wasp stings and a few other unlabelled bottles that had been there long before I was born. So unless it was something really serious, we didn't bother the doctor, which makes life very different from today where the slightest sign of a rash or an infection has patients knocking on his door.

How quick we are to find a remedy for the times our physical body breaks down. Our chemist shops have so much choice, even for trying to control a simple head cold, that sometimes it is difficult to decide which product to buy. Many are less willing to deal as rapidly with the spiritual illness of sin that affects everyone ever born. And it's so much more simple than choosing a medicine for there is only one remedy, one Saviour who can rectify the damage that sin does to our lives. Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'

When a doctor prescribes a medicine for me, it is always specific, for one illness and one person. That means it can't help me if my wife uses it for I have to take it myself. Likewise, when I see others asking Jesus to be their Saviour, it doesn't save me at all. People become believers in groups of one. I think that's pretty specific!