Kid Torture, the Old-Fashioned Way

Every generation has its own version of ways to torture kids "for their own good".  The modern translation of this might be taking away technology for a few days.  But for my generation, the torture came at a molecular level: for health.

Yeah...right.

Understand that, in those days, parents didn't know any better.  They did what they knew how to do to help heal boo-boos and promote general well-being.  In most cases, the Dr. Spocks of the world actually told them that their cures were the things to do to make it all better.  Not everyone understood that letting nature and the human body take care of things without intervention would sometimes work.  And parents didn't take the pledge to "first, do no harm".

Yeah...right.

I'm guessing here, but I would bet that many children of the Baby Boomer generation sucked up their pain rather than risk having things be made to hurt more from treatment.  Being bereft of cell phones and computers for a few days of torture didn't exist back then.  Instead, there were other instruments of torture that were approved.

Case in point:  If you got a cut and pointed it out to your mother, she would treat it with tincture of iodine,  mercurochrome, or merthiolate--all of which were orange in color.  And all three stung like crazy when applied to a wound that already hurt.  Most of us were crying BEFORE the stuff was applied, in anticipation of the pain that would follow.  Blowing on it was the consolation we got for the torture.  (Just for your information, the latter two of the three antiseptics--the two M's--contained mercury and are no longer used in the US.  Not banned.  Just not used anymore.  Whew!)  Peroxide was almost as bad, but my family didn't use peroxide.  Just the orange stuff, much to my dismay.

One time, while first learning to ride a two-wheel bike, (second grade) I skidded on rocks and got a road burn that ran from the side of my buttocks all the way down to my ankle on one leg.  I ran the rest of the way home, crying.  The first thing Mom did was plunk me in the bathtub to wash the dirt out of the wound, which hurt like crazy, then applied the antiseptic when I got out.  Ouch!!  That whole thing didn't get painless until it all scabbed over, days later.  I'll never forget it.

Case in point:  My mother wasn't one to administer cod liver oil for whatever ailed us, thank goodness, but I think many other parents did.  If you want a clue as to what it tasted like, take a tablespoon of cooking oil and swallow it.  It isn't just the awful taste but also the texture that makes you want to throw up.

Case in point:  Have you read the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer?   There is a chapter called something like "Cat and Pain Killer".  Tom's Aunt Polly would frequently administer something she called pain killer to him.  It was so horrible that he found a crack in the floorboards of the house to pour his ample tablespoon of it into when Aunt Polly wasn't looking.  And then, there was the cat who came into the room and curiously seemed to want a dose of it.  Tom complied, and what resulted was a cat that did all kinds of gyrations as a result.  Funny stuff!  My best guess is that the pain killer was mostly alcohol, but Aunt Polly just was certain it had medicinal qualities.   In today's parlance, giving alcohol to children would be grounds for CPS to remove kids from their homes.  Child abuse.  MY parents would never do that, right?  Wrong!  Once upon a time, along about junior high, I badly sprained my ankle in a game of tetherball with my best friend.  That evening at home, I got the chills.  Shock, I guess.  My mother fixed me a hot toddy.  I think she fixed it with bourbon, lemon juice, and sugar, then warmed it up and delivered it to me.  It burned all the way down my throat.  I couldn't begin to drink it all.  Torture?  You bet!  But the chills went away, and I slept well that night.

Case in point:  When I was very, very young--actually among my very first memories--I got pinworms.  We had an open sandbox that I played in...and the neighborhood cats used as a litter box.  Need I say more?  I have no clue how my mother discovered that I had them.  Apparently, they are a common parasitic infestation in humans--to everyone's horror--but it seems that the worms lay eggs in the host's intestines, then get expelled through the rectum.  The treatment in those days was to treat the external rectal area with gentian violet.  I actually remember my mother turning me halfway upside-down to apply the purple stuff to my bottom.  It didn't hurt, so it wasn't exactly kid torture, but just the idea that I had worms still makes me cringe.

Case in point:  The dreaded enema.  Today, enemas are only used in cases of extreme bowel compaction.  In the days of my youth, they were used if kids didn't have bowel movements soon enough or in acceptable amounts.  I can remember twice when I was subjected to this torture at the hands of my own mother.  There was a bag that looked a lot like a douche bag or a hot water bottle.  It had a hose and a nozzle.  Mom made me lie down on the bathroom floor as she administered this, until I was frantic because the internal pressure said I was going to explode in ways that toilet training had taught me to avoid.  That's all the detail anyone needs to know!

I dearly loved my mother.  All of the health treatments I got from her were totally about doing what was best for me, based on the medical knowledge at the time.  She would never have tortured me on purpose.  Things were just different back then.

Yeah...right.  :-)