Page 20 - Pharmacy History 37 Nov 2009

‘Four three penn’orths please ‘
David Newgreen and others
Pharmacists of the 1950s and some even younger would not even have to scratch their head to be able to dispense an over the counter request for such a remedy used to treat winter coughs and ills.
Usually a Spanish liquorice stick was part of the formula as well and it was boiled in water with treacle to make a nice sugary base to which when cooled, was added the bottle of the tinctures.
This mixture was a fairly universal ‘home brew’ which was also known as LAPP or ‘all fours’.
‘All fours’ was the English version of a mixture of peppermint, aniseed, paregoric and laudanum. ‘Four
three penn’orths’ was a colloquial name derived from the quantity of each ingredient linked to its price. A ‘pennorth ‘ was the price of a ‘penny’s worth’. In some situations,
a pennorth could also mean a penny weight which was a unit of weight used when measuring a solid ingredient, or a grandfather clock!
These household products could be sold without a prescription in most Australian states, although the dispenser had to write up in the dangerous drugs register the volume of tincture of opium used in the preparation of the final product.
An alternative to brew it yourself was to buy a bottle of ‘heenz essence’, make the liquorice concoction and mix the two. For the even more indolent, heenzo was a popular patent medicine.
Bishop’s drops
There was also a compostion known as ‘bishops drops’. This mixture contained tinct opii 90 m, sp ammon aromat 120 m, sp menth pip (1-5) 120 m, sp aetheris 120 m; sp vini rect ad 1 fl oz.
The adult dose is 12-15 drops in water and. This too was outside the
dangerous drugs
regulations.
These cough products were much more widely known and supplied.
It was not quite like the infamous ‘mother’s little friend’ and similar sedative mixtures, containing opium as the active ingredient, which tended to be used by workers in
the great English industrial cities.
The expression pennethworth or similar, is more than likely English, as it was used by Charles Dickens in one of his novels.
The formula was usually:
Ess menth pip Ess anisi
Tr camph co Tr opii
150 m 150 m
120 m 60 m
20 Pharmacy History Australia
volume 5 no 37 NOVEMBER 2009