In a message dated 11/15/2002 2:35:16 PM Mountain Standard Time, NJ-MEMORIES-D-request@rootsweb.com writes: > We never had to take > any but I spent every summer with my grandmother in Ocean Grove and every > Saturday night was the tablespoon of Milk of Magnesia. No wonder they called the place "Ocean Grave"! :-} That's one thing that's definitely recommended against now -- treating someone routinely for something that doesn't "ail" him. Handing out laxatives when people weren't constipated was one of the worst offenders, and it's caused a lot of problems: for one, people whose intestines got so used to being prodded into action that they won't work any other way; for another, folks who were so focused on their bowels that they thought they were "tied up" for good if they didn't have a movement every single day; for a third, there were the electrolyte imbalances induced by loading up on magnesium-containing products regularly. The combination-of-ingredients medications that are so much a part of our lives now are the modern equivalent of that; I hate seeing people take those things! Doris in Colorado (Up2Nutrix@aol.com) "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr