Geoff Stead, of Kendal, recalls medicinal remedies in his childhood in the 1940s and 1950s.

REMEMBERING how, as infants and children, our health was maintained by watchful parents, the following comes to mind.

Recovering from whooping cough, I recall being wheeled in my pushchair a couple of miles to a small reservoir where, it was thought, the combination of fresh air in an elevated situation and water, would do the convalescent a great deal of good.

Another example of received wisdom, passed down from a previous generation, was the beneficial effects of breathing in the fumes of the fresh tarmacadam being laid in the road in front of our cottage. It was good for the chest, Mam declared.

The traditional oak corner cupboard containing our medicines hung on brackets in the kitchen was, I imagine, by 1950s standards, well stocked.

Besides basic items such as aspirin, a roll of sticking plaster for cuts, bandages and lint for more serious injuries, Sloan's liniment for muscle and joint pains, camomile lotion for itchy skin, golden eye ointment, and Fenning's fever cure, there were other trusted remedies.

Colds were treated with menthol crystals dissolved in hot water, and inhaled from a bowl for half an hour with a towel over one's head.

As a child, two other remedies, which Mam set great store by, yet always filled me with dread, were senna pods, a powerful laxative, soaked in water overnight, then drunk as a kind of tea the following morning. Bicarbonate of soda, kept in a large jam jar was produced at the slightest symptoms of a stomach upset.

'It might make you sick, first', Mam would say, 'but then you'll feel better'. As always, she was right.