Tsar Bomb - The biggest bomb ever. Lobotomy - PBS documentary, on Walter Freeman. 10 Radioactive Products That People Actually Used. 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. Cocaine: Lloyd Cocaine Toothache Drops 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. Metcalf's Coca Wine Coca wine combined wine with cocaine, producing a compound now known as cocaethylene, which, when ingested, is nearly as powerful a stimulant as cocaine.
Vin Mariani Wine The marketing efforts for coca wine focused primarily on its medicinal properties, in part because it didn't taste very good and in part because the cocaethylene effects were perceived to "fortify and refresh body and brain" and "restore health and vitality. " Heroin: Smith Glyco-Heroin A mixture of heroin and glycerin. Opium: Morphine: Mrs. Quaaludes: Cigarettes: The Nazi Death Machine: Hitler's Drugged Soldiers - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. The stimulant Pervitin was delivered to the soldiers at the front. In a letter dated November 9, 1939, to his "dear parents and siblings" back home in Cologne, a young soldier stationed in occupied Poland wrote: "It's tough out here, and I hope you'll understand if I'm only able to write to you once every two to four days soon. Today I'm writing you mainly to ask for some Pervitin ...; Love, Hein.
" Pervitin, a stimulant commonly known as speed today, was the German army's -- the Wehrmacht's -- wonder drug. On May 20, 1940, the 22-year-old soldier wrote to his family again: "Perhaps you could get me some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply? " And, in a letter sent from Bromberg on July 19, 1940, he wrote: "If at all possible, please send me some more Pervitin. " Many of the Wehrmacht's soldiers were high on Pervitin when they went into battle, especially against Poland and France -- in a Blitzkrieg fueled by speed.
Thirty-five million tablets "Their spirits suddenly improved"