MedTeck.

The Cough Drop is one of the simple medicines that many people use nowadays. In its simple candy-like many medicines are inside, dulling your coughing experience when you have the common cold. But how was that amazing small medicine created?

 

Of course, it is known that healing and curing diseases has been around for a while. Many old civilizations such as the Greeks and the Romans used several herbs to cleanse the bodies of the infected for long while. Then later, heroin was used as a cough syrup until replaced by a different cough syrup made in Canada by W.K Buckley. In between that time period where heroin was replaced by a different cough syrup, cough drops are made.

 

The cough drop was invented by the Smith Brothers, William Wallace Smith and Andrew Smith of the U.S.A, sons of James Smith. James travelled from Fife, Scotland to St. Armand, Quebec, Canada, and he finally immigrated to Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.A. In New York, James opened an ice cream shop named after his two sons, William and Andrew. It was called “James Smith and Sons Ice Cream Shop” During one of James’ journeys, James encountered a peddler that sold James a recipe of the cough drop. James created his first batch and sold in glass jars.

 

After James Smith died in 1866, both William and Andrew took the torch from their father, and continued the ice cream shop.  Their first move was to package their father’s cough drops, to ensure that no other company would copy their idea of the cough drop. The result of their packaging resulted in making them the inventors of the cough drop, though actually they weren’t.

 

Soon after Andrew died, leaving William to take care of the job. After William died, their sons took over the company, and they added more products to their cough drop line up, such as cherry flavour cough drops, and cough syrup. The company continued in that direction, where each generation took over the company. Later, the brand was bought by F&F Foods, and F&F Foods took off all of the Smith Brothers logos from all of the Smith Brothers brands. Production of the Smith Brothers cough drops moves from Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.A to Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A once it was bought. Finally, the brand was bought off to GemPac Corp in 2011. The Smith Brothers cough drops are now being produced in Chicago to this date.