When I was working on a short story last weekend, I had to look up how to spell the orange-red medicine my family used to keep germs off my frequent skinned knees. It was called Mercurochrome, and it was taken off the market because it contained Mercury. You can’t buy a mercury thermometer to go under your tongue or arm either.

My grandmother used Vicks Salve or Vicks VapoRub, which contains camphor and menthol, for many things. Its vapors would relieve congestion, sooth a cough and sore muscles. It was also a cure for foot fungus, healing rough skin on heels, and repelling mosquitos.

When I had a bad cold with asthma, I took a hot bath, wrapped up and got under warm covers. Granny then rubbed my chest with Vicks and put some in a vaporizer on the floor. She put a layer of Vicks on my chest, covered in a warm cloth, and a pile of quilts. By morning I was much better, if not cured. Richardson-Vicks Company also developed NyQuil, Clearasil (I used on pimples), and Oil of Olay, before they sold to Proctor and Gamble.

By far my worst memories are of Miss Simmons’s Prescription, described in my memoir, Growing Up MAD in the South: Stories, Poems and Other Aberrations. On Friday evenings when my parents picked up my sister and I from her nursery school, Miss Simmons handed them a jar of her prescription to be given Friday night. The ingredients were castor oil, Milk of Magnesia and syrup of Pepsin, all laxatives. Castor Oil was also good for dry eyes, to induce labor, and heal scars and wounds which the Egyptians had discovered. To sooth our stomachs on Sunday, we sipped Coca Cola syrup.

What medicines can you remember from your childhood? What was the medicine a treatment for? Is there someone special with whom you associate that medicine? Write a scene about going to an adult with a “hurtie.”