TONIC DRINKERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1939, Page 8

TONIC DRINKERS

SOME SOUND ADVICE. Hitler and the weather are no doubt jointly responsible for our greatly increased need, this season, for “a bottle from the doctor.” In other words, many of us these days find ourselves in need of a chemical tonic if we are to keep going, states the “Manchester Guardian.” Now, for the housewife and the home worker, there is no difficulty about the regular swallowing of a liquid prescription in teaspoonfuls or tablespoonfuls after each meal, diluted or undiluted with water. Memory alone is needed. But it is not so easy for the office worker to take his or her medicine with the required regularity. Men especially are averse to carrying bottles about with them, and it is not uncommon for worried wives to despair when the doctor orders their husbands to take a liquid tonic mixture after lunch as well as after breakfast and supper. Pills, of course, are one way out, but most of the strong and speedy tonics are made up in a syrupy mixture, and this calls for the additional trouble of measurement with each dose. A useful hint has just been given to me by an astute wife, and here it is. Emptying a small bottle which had contained aspirin, she tested it first carefully with water to make sure it would not leak, even if carried anyhow in the pocket. She then experimented with the exact amount of tonic dose, and each morning, after persuading her husband to absorb his tablespoonful after breakfast, she made him put the later doses in his pocket. Either one or two will go into an aspirin bottle, according to requirements, and these can be swallowed directly out of the bottle or diluted in a tumbler of water, always to be had anywhere after the midday meal. Each night the bottle is washed and pocketed. In this way the tonic becomes really efficacious, because habitual. Such trifling dodges are sometimes worth while where more elaborate instructions will fail of their effect.