r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/JennyFromTheBlockJok • 6d ago

The inventor of Vaseline, Robert Chesebrough, was such a firm believer in its medicinal properties that he claimed to have eaten a spoonful of it a day. During a bout of pleurisy in his 50s, he ordered his nurse to cover him from head to toe in the substance, and soon recovered. He lived to be 96. Image

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u/bobpaul 6d ago

You betcha. Vaseline infused with bacitracin and a couple of other antibiotics. But there's drug resistant bacteria now. And people tend to leave these little bottles in the medicine cabinet for years and years. By the expiration date it's not "expired" in a dangerous sense, but it's not quite as effective. Leave it there another few years and it's a lot less effective.

This was one of the things people found out when they switched from pseudophedrine (which can be used to make meth) to phenylephrine (which can't). People would leave the boxes on the shelf for too long and then found out that phenylephrine never worked as a decongestant in the first place, even before the "expiration" date.

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u/Stepane7399 6d ago

True story. I hadn't used Advil Cold & Sinus in some time when I got what I'm certain was the flu in 2012. I bought some Advil Cold & Sinus figuring that'd help get me as right as I could be and it did fuck all compared to how I remembered it. It was awful waiting hours for this shit to work. I then turned to Google to learn that it's because it was no longer pseudoephedrine and was instead phenylephrine, which I found to be useless for my purposes. It should be outlawed.

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u/Andyman0110 6d ago

I got some Buckley's pills in a bottle, not even over the counter, just on a shelf. It was like 50 pills for 8 bucks. I was sick as fuck, I took two and I went into almost a lucid state. I was awake and moving but everything felt like a dream. I went up my stairs and it was as if I was on an escalator. It felt like I was floating up them. I asked my friend to try them because I couldn't tell if it was the pills or I was just really sick and hallucinating. He called me back the next day and told me he was absolutely blasted off two of them. I have no clue how those are legal to sell but that's the highest I've been off any cold medication. I feel like if I took a couple more I'd have a full on acid trip equivalent. They worked well though, I forgot I was sick for the rest of the day.

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u/trotfox_ 6d ago

DM in that or what?

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u/Automatic_Rock_2685 6d ago

Almost certainly from the description lol.

Robotrippin!