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Miracle Salve - 16 March 2003 . 01:36 The Rub That Relieved Millions In the 1890s a young pharmacist in Greensboro named Lunsford Richardson found himself facing the dilemma so many parents faced then: his son Smith had the croup, and anything used as a poultice irritated his baby's skin. What could he do? Richardson decided to ask his brother-in-law to use his laboratory to do some expirements. The pharmacist finally hit on a mixture of Japanese mint oil (menthol), camphor, and eucalyptus in a base of petroleum jelly, and found that it gave relief to croupy coughs. Body heat caused the rub to vaporize, and through inhilation and absorption of the medicines in the petroleum jelly, the patient found relief. Successfully selling the rub locally, by 1905 Richardson invested his entire life savings in a laboratory, and his son went to work with him. They changed the name of the rub from Richardson's Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve to honor the brother-in-law who had loaned his laboratory, and set about on the first mass-mailing campaign in teh United States. The salve was an instant hit both in the states and internationally, and Richardson died in 1919 a wealthy man. The brother-in-law's name was Dr. Joshua Vick. And the salve? You know it today as Vick's VapoRub. My Mom received a rejection letter from my workplace in regard to the job she interviewed for last Wednesday. Bastards. So now my sister has a job lined up down here and will be staying with me but my Mom will be left, stranded, in that wretched township...alone. Hopefully not for long though. I shall peruse classifieds from the local papers and online venues until I secure her a job in this locale. My car window, which is a power window, is still not working. I stood out in the rain replacing the switch (which, in hindsight, seems foolish to be playing around with electricity while the rain beats down on me and the car) but it was not the switch that malfunctioned. It's the actual window motor and no one carrying the motor will be open today...leaving me with an oh-so-ghetto saran-wrapped window until Monday. And the weather forecast? Rain, rain, rain...through Monday. *sigh* And apparently my neglect of payment to the blood-suckers at the local cablevision company caused them to disconnect my beloved cablevision. The jerks didn't send me any type of warning, final notice, thinly veiled threat...not even a phone call saying, "Hey, slacker! We're disconnecting your cable unless we receive payment in the next 14 seconds...have a nice day." *double sigh* At least they'll be out Tuesday to reconnect my service...or so they say...
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