Chris Upton: A blast from the past . . .

Mar 4 2010 By Chris Upton

I have spent much research time with Victorian mortality recently. The result of this is, if I go down with anything, that I immediately assume I must have caught it from reading. So, a couple of weeks back, I had typhus, which turned into cholera, and then into a generic zymotic disease.

The fact that I’m writing this column obviously proves the contrary. I had simply got what someone told me was a “D and V” bug. I’ve never been very good with acronyms, but it only took five minutes in the bathroom to work out what “D & V” stood for.

Nor did it take long for the bug to work its way up and down our family tree. First my mother caught it, then myself and my wife, and then my brother-in-law. He couldn’t eat for three days and neither could I.

It was on the second day that I developed a craving for Lucozade. I hadn’t thought of the stuff for years, and had clearly relegated it to a dusty medical cabinet in the back of the mind. Lucozade was one of childhood’s miracle cures, a sparkling golden liquid that revived millions. I recalled the crinkly yellow cellophane which covered the bottle, and made the contents look even more orange than they actually were.

Lucozade imparted its health-giving properties most generously. Half-way down the bottle, when the liquid itself became flat and lifeless, the recipient became bubbly and effervescent instead, ready to emerge from bed and torment his parents once more.

So I crawled down to the chemist’s to buy the famous golden panacea. Never have I felt so out-of-date and ignorant as when the pharmacist waved away my request with professional disdain. I might have been asking for eye of newt or mandrake root. “We haven’t sold Lucozade for years,” she said dismissively. “Try the supermarket next door.”

And there it was, shelved beside all those other “sports” drinks, re-marketed for all-night clubbers and athletes who don’t trust their own blood. I had clearly been standing still, while medical science and Lucozade had been moving in different directions.

I drank it all the same and felt revived. The only disappointment was that the bottle no longer came in squeaky yellow cellophane. Perhaps it was this that imparted the cure, not the liquid inside.

* Dr Chris Upton is an effervescent Senior Lecturer in History at Newman University College in Birmingham