16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, March 4, 1912: I have my first cold of the winter now. It seems to have all gone to my throat. We are going to have recitations next Friday, but our teacher instead of having some interesting speeches favors dried up pieces of poetry. Oh it will be stupid from beginning to end.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Colds aren’t fun. Maybe Grandma used some cough drops to soothe her throat. Amazingly Smith Brothers’ Cough Drops were available a hundred years—and are still available today.
Rainy Day
Cough at Night
5 cents a box
Never be without a box of S.B. cough drops during the Fall and Winter– during damp, chilly weather when sore throats, coughs and hoarseness are so prevalent. Take a few of these drops on your way home from the heated theatre, dance hall, office, etc. Far better than medicine, more pleasant, too. Good to take before the “forty-winks.” They loosen the phlegm.
Smith Brothers’
S.B. Cough Drops
Containing Only Pure Medicinal Oils–No Glucose
Makers of S.B. Chewing Gum and Lasses Kisses
Smith Brother of Poughkeepsie
Your Grandpa Knows Us
I absolutely love the last line of the ad–“Your Grandpa Knows Us.” Smith Brother cough drops have been around for a long, long time if that’s how they were advertising them in the early 1900s!
