I have no clue where the idea for mud medicine came from. Were we possibly bent on the destruction of the hated cod liver oil or trying to extend our meager supplies? No matter, there we were, the three of us, under the back porch in our favorite hidey hole, deciding to create mud medicine.
As I am sure you know, medicine requires "stink"! That it would taste bad went without saying. It was mud.
None of us could read, so we took every bottle in the medicine chest. I do not know how we escaped the notice of three eagle eyed moms in residence.
Back under the porch we dumped the contents of each and every bottle into our pail, then added dirt to make a really good goo. We rolled it into "pills" and put them out to dry in the sun. When they seemed dry enough we put them back in the bottles. It did not go well. On the trip back to the bathroom cabinet we were discovered.
During the war most medicines were hard to come by. Our moms had pooled their treasures of cough syrup, aspirin, and vitamins along with the hated cod liver oil and my mother's precious "nerve medicine". That was the irreplaceable one.
The doctor prescribed in it's place 2 bottles of beer each day. Mom hated beer. Each time she tried to choke down a swallow she reiterated the mud medicine episode. I heard about it for more than 50 years, which may be the reason I remember it so well.
The rest of the medicine was slowly replaced as war coupons became available, except for the hated cod liver oil. It was cheap, available and back the next day.
