Oh, yeah! "Regularity" was a real fetish back in those Glorious Days of Yesteryear. If a kid didn't have a daily dump, out would come all sorts of bottles, spoons, and sometimes things too fierce to mention. One of the bottle and spoon schticks was, indeed, Fletcher's Castoria (castor oil base, I'm pretty sure, hence the brand name).

And the chocolate covered laxative? If I remember correctly, the brand name was Ex-Lax. Chocolate flavored Roto-Rooter.

One George Washington Carver (CLICKY), a former slave who became a scientist and researcher, maintained that something akin to miracles could be wrought with peanut oil, including curing the after-effects of polio.

I had polio at the age of two, which rendered my right leg paralyzed and partially paralyzed my left leg. For a maybe a year or two, a couple of nights a week my father massaged my legs with warm peanut oil and put me through an exercise routine. It was a little hard to tell if there was any actual improvement, but it certainly didn't cure the condition. It was later determined that there was no noticeable effect from the peanut oil, but that the massage and exercise was, indeed, beneficial.

Warm peanut oil was often dropped into the ear of a youngster having an ear-ache. There, too, relief probably came, not from the peanut oil per se, but from the warmth of the oil.

Don Firth