Here's a selection of Instantaneous Invigorators & Cures of the 1900's. Those were the good old days when heroin and cocaine was sold over the counter for whatever ails you. Don't believe me? Check this out!!


It's a Bottle of Bayer's heroin!! Wow! Between 1890 and 1910 heroin was sold as a non-addictive (???) substitute for morphine. It was also used to treat children with a strong cough.


Coca Wine, anyone? Metcalf's Coca Wine was one of a huge variety of wines with cocaine on the market. Everybody used to say that it would make you happy and it would also work as a medicinal treatment.


Mariani wine was the most famous Coca wine around 1875. Pope Leo XIII used to carry one bottle with him all the time. He awarded Angelo Mariani (the producer) with a Vatican gold medal.


Maltine with your Coca? Produced by Maltine Manufacturing Company of New York. It was suggested that you should take a full glass with or after every meal, but children should take half a glass.


A paper weight promoting C.F. Boehringer & Soehne (Mannheim, Germany). They were proud of being the biggest producers in the world of products containing Quinine and Cocaine.


Opium for Asthma. It was considered safe since it contained no more than 40% alcohol!


Cocaine Tablets! All stage actors, singers teachers and preachers had to have them in the 1900's for a maximum performance. Great to “smooth” the voice.


Cocaine Toothache Drops. Very popular for children in 1885. Not only did they relieve the pain, they made the children happy...


Opium for Newborns! This would make them sleep well, and was great for soothing a teething baby. Opium with 46% alcohol - Really? No wonder they were called The Good Old Days!

Lina Medina (born September 27, 1933 in Paurange, Peru gave birth at the age of 5 years, 7 months and 21 days and is the youngest confirmed mother in medical history. This world record is closely followed by a similar case in Russia.

Lina was brought to a hospital by her parents at the age of 5 years because of increasing abdominal size. She was originally thought to have had a tumor, but her doctors determined she was in the seventh month of pregnancy. Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, the capital of Peru, prior to the surgery to have other specialists confirm that Lina was in fact pregnant. A month and a half later, on May 14, 1939, she gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. The surgery was performed by Dr. Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colretta providing anaesthesia. Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel to La Presse Medicale, along with the additional details that her menarche had occurred at 8 months of age, and prominent breast development by 4 years. By age 5 her figure displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation.

Her son weighed 2.7 kg (5.8 lb) at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Lina was his sister, but found out that she was his mother at the age of ten. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of a disease of the bone marrow.

There was never evidence that Lina Medina's pregnancy occurred in any but the usual way, but she never revealed the father of the child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Dr. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Lina "couldn't give precise responses." Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of rape and incest, but was later released due to lack of evidence. Medina later married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. They live in a poor district of Lima known as Chicago Chico ("Little Chicago"). She refused an interview with Reuters in 2002.

There are two published photographs documenting the case. The first one was taken around the beginning of April, 1939, when Medina was seven and a half months into pregnancy. Taken from Medina's left side, it shows her standing naked in front of an inconclusive backdrop (either the side wall of a house with the sun shining on her, or a light-diffusing blanket in a room with an overhead light pointed toward the front of her body). This is the only published photograph of Lina taken during her pregnancy. This photograph is of significant value because it proves Medina's pregnancy as well as the extent of her physiological development. However, this photograph is not widely known outside medical circles. The other photograph is of far greater clarity and was taken a year later in Lima when Gerardo was eleven months old.

Although the case was called a hoax by some, a number of doctors over the years have verified it based on biopsies, X rays of the fetal skeleton in utero, and photographs taken by the doctors caring for her. Extreme degrees of precocious puberty in children under 5 are very uncommon but not unheard of. Pregnancy and delivery by a child this young remains extremely rare because extremely precocious puberty is treated to suppress fertility, preserve growth potential, and reduce the social consequences of full sexual development in childhood, and because termination of such pregnancy is more widely available now than in the early 20th century.