Again within the day when “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” was on sale, there was no legislation stipulating that the producers of over-the-counter medicines print the contents of their concoctions on the packaging. Actually, the secrecy of their components was held by many shoppers to be a sign of a product’s particular properties, suggesting that it had an edge over its rivals.
So what did Mrs. Winslow put into her secret syrup recipe that proved to be so efficient in calming young children and infants? A mix of alcohol and opium — particularly morphine, and several other different chemical substances. As stunning as these components appear to us in the present day, the actual fact is that many such medicines existed on the time, with most people total unaware of the long-term well being dangers of opium or its addictive properties. Nonetheless, the degrees of morphine in “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” of their prescribed doses made the product one of the crucial lethal in the marketplace to infants and young children.