I had to trim this passage out of my Pajamas profile of James Lileks' Mommy Knows Worst for space requirements:

Today’s parents fear that school nurses are overdosing their kids with Ritalin. But the previous generation of children apparently risked being doped up too. One of the earliest pieces in Lileks’ book, dating back to the 1920s, is what he calls “this bristling jeremiad written by some medical educator who is yelling about ‘The Crime of Soothing Syrups’, which in those days, meant giving your kids a thimble of absinthe or laudanum or opium to keep them quiet!” Lileks isn’t kidding, though. “Seriously—this woman is writing tracts about the women who dope up their kids so that they could have a night of going to the sinful movie theater. So if the idea that it’s probably not good to give your kid absinthe has registered, we’ve made steps in the right direction.”

A Florida couple accused of feeding their 3-month-old baby a lethal dose of vodka to quiet her crying surrendered to police in New Jersey Thursday.