Weed, Booze, Cocaine and Other Old School "Medicine" Ads
Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but some awfully strange substances have been used for pharmaceutical purposes in the past -- and some might argue, continue to be used today. Here are some vintage advertisements touting items that we might balk at taking today.
In the US, cocaine was sold over the counter until 1914 and was commonly found in products like toothache drops, dandruff remedies and medicinal tonics.
Coca wine combined wine with cocaine, producing a compound now known as cocaethylene, which, when ingested, is nearly as powerful a stimulant as cocaine.
Depending on which list of contents you reference, this cure for colds, coughs and "all diseases of the throat and lungs" contained either morphine or heroin.
clipped from: www.pharmacytechs.net 
