Word: magnesia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Magnesia & Matzo. According to the few doctors who have studied the subject, the craving for laundry starch is an offshoot of the clay-eating habit still prevalent among some Southern Negroes. Those who migrate North sometimes receive packages of clay (known as "Mississippi Mud" in Los Angeles) mailed by friends back home, but most switch to laundry starch, which is easier to obtain and apparently satisfies the same hunger...
Across the country, the preferred brand is Argo Gloss Starch, available in either the economy-size blue box at 19? or the handy red box at 11?. Both contain chewy lumps that taste, according to one gourmet, like "a cross between milk of magnesia and matzo. The texture is that of an after-dinner mint." Like peanuts, one handful leads to another. "After a box of it," said one woman, "my throat gets kind of sticky, so I go and get a big glass of ice water. Then I get a powerful desire for more." Some enthusiasts spice laundry starch...
...however, was milk of magnesia; the water was nominous slate. And the water was the Charles River, which everyone seemed to forget. One boy with a thick Cambridge brogue, remembered that the Charles is the most polluted thing this side of Central Square...
...still prescribe antacids. But nowadays these are nearly all of the nonsystemic kind-unlike bicarb, they are never absorbed into the bloodstream and are far safer. The body processes them more slowly, so they do not give such quick relief. The most familiar, in the form of milk of magnesia, is magnesium hydroxide, and this is the main ingredient in many brand-name preparations. Since it has laxative properties, some manufacturers combine it with aluminum hydroxide, which is also antacid but, taken alone, is slightly constipating. Several proprietary preparations contain magnesium trisilicate, which neutralizes acid by both chemical and physical...
...Diebold, 91, a founder in 1901 and president until 1941 of Sterling Drug, Inc., who began business in Wheeling, W. Va., and with brilliant marketing and an unerring eye for mergers parlayed Neuralgine, an analgesic, into a $250 million-a-year business (Novocain, Demerol, Bayer aspirin, Phillips Milk of Magnesia); in Palm Beach...