Pity the poor Victorian-era family whose bottle of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup ran dry. It was touted as an indispensable aid to quiet bawling babies and teething tots, and it packed a wallop of an ingredient: morphine.

Today, no one would dream of calming an infant with morphine, but the museum of medicine is littered with such discarded remedies. Some were fanciful potions that quacks concocted to make a buck, while others were legitimate -- even revered -- treatments that eventually yielded to more enlightened science.

For example, opium suffers a tainted reputation these days. But doctors have favored it throughout history, especially to control coughing and diarrhea.

"It was regarded as an all-purpose drug. One physician called it 'God's own medicine,'" says James C. Whorton, PhD, a medical historian and professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine.