3707There is a thing called dimethlyl sulfoxide. It is, as I learned when I was but a neat thing, is a "solvent degreaser". It was a byproduct of paper manufacture, and we had a paper plant on just about every corner through the 1970s, so it was all over the place. It also has alleged medical properties, and is or maybe was-has-been touted as an 'alternative' treatment for cancer.
Sort of an Oregonized laetrile, if you will.
And there was a time, back in the 1970s, when stores from the drug to the hardware variety, all thoughout northwestern Oregon, would sell it to you. But they couldn't sell it as a drug, because that was illegal. So they solid it as that 'solvent degreaser' that the average home just couldn't do without and it's-a-suppressed-miracle-drug-but-you-didn't-hear-that-from-the-person-behind-the-counter-at-the-Coast-to-Coast-if-you-catch-our-meaning-here.
But, back then, you could find DMSO just about everywhere because, well, power to the people, I guess.
It's hard to find now, not so much because the nanny-state suppressed it but because, just like anything, it's fallen out of style. We've moved on. But there are some places you can find it:
The sign on the top of a local mailbox somewhere around the corner of SE 117th and Market is similar in shape and format to the signs peering out of store windows back in the day beckoning you in for some of that sweet, sweet, DMSO anodyne. Actually, DMSO has some very interesting properties: it is absorbed readily into the skin, and can become thereby a transdermal transport vehicle for some other pharmaceuticals. Also, when you apply it, you taste garlic at the back of your throat because of science science neural transport biochemistry science (hand wave). But it hasn't changed medicine or liberated the peoples thereupon, and, as I've said, we've moved on. Mostly.
The sigh of a The Oregonian paper tube, in this era of a light tabloid daily that isn't even delivered seven days a week any more, just ups the poignancy of years gone by.
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