Durban - Back in the day, if you sought help from the pharmacy at 165 Musgrave Road for halitosis, you may have been offered Chamberlain’s Tablets for “one and six”.
Today, there’s no pharmacy at 165, but Sparkport Pharmacy at 77 will offer TCP as a remedy, for R60.
The information of the former made a long journey, from Durban to Florida in the US and back to Durban.
Durban-born Robyne Hobbs-
Thompson was working at John’s Island golf club at Vero Beach in Florida in the US after the club had reopened after renovations.
“During one of my shifts, I was bored and exploring one of the
new rooms. There was this piece
of furniture with what seemed like 100 small drawers. It was decorative, not functional, so I started opening the drawers.”
Carole Hobbs holds an advert from an old Durban pharmacy, JAS Gellately Family & Dispensing Chemist, that was once at 165 Musgrave Road, Durban. Her daughter found it in an old drawer while working in the US. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng ANA
In one of them, Hobbs-Thompson found a newspaper advert from one Musgrave Pharmacy in her home town across the ocean.
“It was a new piece of furniture - well, new to John’s Island, so I assumed the paper came with the furniture!” she said in an email.
“I don’t think anyone at the club even knew it was there and it definitely did not have any significance to them.”
The advert must be at least 59 years old, given that it was February in 1961 that South Africa started using rands and cents rather than pounds, shillings and pence. Very likely even older, given the wording in the ad. There’s none of this “Shame, poor you for having bad breath. It must be someone’s fault”.
The words in the ad are more
reminiscent of a strict parent or teacher: “There is no excuse for your having bad breath. It arises from a disordered stomach and can be
quickly removed by a dose of Chamberlain’s Tablets, which cleanse the stomach and sweeten the breath.”
Hobbs-Thompson sent it home to her mother, Carole Hobbs, in Umbilo, who brought it to the attention of the Independent on Saturday after it attracted much reaction on the Facebook group Durban Down Memory Lane. Comments presented further clues of the era in which it would have been an ad.
“Wow, only four digits in the phone number,” wrote Geraldine Filmalter.
Two commentators guessed it dated back to the 1950s, while another two reckoned the 1920s or 1930s.
Hobbs-Thompson, who matriculated at Durban Girls’ High in 1999, has travelled and worked in many countries and now lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her American husband and their two children.