A Spoonful of Sugar...

In the Mary Poppins movie, Mary gives the children flavored cod-liver oil, while singing "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."

I don't know about the benefits of cod-liver oil, but the sugar part is true.

In the 60s, we were given polio vaccine on sugar cubes.

We lined up at a school (Hillsdale, maybe?) cafeteria, and after the proper paperwork was filled out, we filed past the tables lined with large trays of sugar cubes with the vaccine soaked into them, and took one.

The sugar cube, very stiff at first, soon gave way to grainy crystals, then syrupy sweetness. To us, who rarely had candy (pity us), it was a sweet treat. One of which, like Lays Potato Chips, "no one could eat just one". Fred somehow sneaked back into the line and got some more of the cubes, which we promptly popped in our mouths, like candy.

To this day, I don't know if we doubled up our dose of vaccine (which was the live strain), or if we just got plain sugar cubes... I do know that we never got polio.