Paregoric? thats a REALLY, really OLD-school med! They still sell a cough syrup sort of similar to paregoric. Called Gee's linctus, its over the counter still, surprisingly, as its based on tincture of opium, and quite respectably strong too, couple of bottles of that (200ml per bottle) and you'll be glowing for most of the rest of the day with a lovely relaxing buzz.
Although using that sort of thing for teething babies? shit no. the very young are much, MUCH more sensitive to opioids than adults, teens or older preteens (of course in the last case it should only be under doctor's supervision, as an overdose is more likely) Babies in particular though, they used to make a great many 'mother's soothing syrups' and 'mother's little helper' remedies, intended to quiet teething babies, and little'uns stroppy for whatever other little wee brat being little wee brat reasons. Because lets face it, little kids are stroppy little shits for all sorts of reasons, or no reason at all for that matter
These were all the rage, these opiate-based (and often also quite alcoholic along with the laudanum, opium, paregoric and other various opium derivatives, many of these 'calming' patent products intended for quieting babies that wouldn't shut their little howling screaming puking shitting faces when mommy wanted to sleep instead of listen to screaming all night and day long, had a lot of alcohol as well, and they were a big problem, in the 1700s and earlier, because of the number of fatal overdoses of babies due to the use of these opiate syrups and cordials; it used to be a really quite big societal problem back then, some of my old antique physician's textbooks from the 16th century tell of it, and how they ought never to be used due to the risk of fatal poisonings of the babies by the opium content.
But a drop or two of alcohol on a fingertip is IMO not going to present anything like the kind of acute danger those opiate syrups did. Although absinthe shouldn't be used, there is a lot of sugar present in it, and other liqueur type alcohols, and if any teeth are present that is awfully bad for the baby's teeth/tooth, and besides, such early exposure to a lot of sugar could predispose the baby to be hooked on sugary foods to excess later on in life.
Oh, and OOOHHH! SQUEEEEEEEEE! just went to check on my ammonium formate I've been preparing, by first mixing aqueous formic acid and aqueous ammonia solution, followed by slowly, carefully evaporating down the solution, to get rid of the water, and I just noticed that the beaker is starting to get a deposit of clear crystals around the rim.
SQUEESQUEESQUEESQUEEEEEEE!!!
Been busy evaporating that down for over fifteen hours, finally down to less than 30ml of now highly concentrated solution. Going to put some cling film over the top, to prevent it from absorbing water (ammonium formate is pretty hygroscopic and I need dry crystalline product, not a thick syrupy liquid) and take it off the hotplate for a while, allowing it to cool down, see if it is supersaturated, which it should be, hopefully, then I could just filter off my first crop of crystalline ammonium formate, and keep it in the dessicator to dry it out thoroughly over something like freshly flame-fused caustic, before putting it in a bag and smashing it up with a hammer to powder for use as a dessicant)
Going for one last check on it, after I stick my gas mask on (if any were to spit and drip onto the hotplate it would first dehydrate to formamide, and formamide would dehydrate further to decompose to hydrogen cyanide gas, so mask and goggles on time) and grab some cling film.
Bugger....no damn cling-film.
Just had to transfer the solution by picking up the beaker and transferring the much-reduced-volume of by now concentrated as hell ammonium formate, at a temperature of between 95 and 98 'C, slowly and accurately pouring it into a series of much smaller microscale beakers which will fit in my dessicator, of about 10ml capacity in each, after first filling a container with sodium hydroxide as small grains, like salt but smaller, sticking that in the base of the dessicator and covering it with a metal grille full of holes, on which the microscale beakers now are sitting, the top of the dessicator on, being sucked dry of H2O.
That wasn't much fun. Had to make the transfer accurately, just in case of any decomposition to cyanide, holding the searing hot beaker and in the other hand, one microscale beaker after another, pouring in a portion of the whole, and feeling the skin of my thumb and first three fingers of one hand, and my thumb and forefinger and second finger of the other hand first dry out and then start crisping up at the surface, more or less just keeping hold of the damn things by dint of sheer willpower and refusal to drop them after all that time spent evaporating off the water oh so slowly. Easy enough to make the ammonium formate solution itself, just takes a load of time stripping the water off without overheating it (boiling point of H2O being 100 'C of course, whilst the degradation temperature for ammonium formate to start turning to formamide is 180 'C, but the temperature of the stirplate surface itself is a lot hotter than the liquid in the beaker, although this was moderated by heating it with the beaker being put onto a metal grille impregnated with a disk of refractory material.)
Now, to slowly strip away the remaining H2O using a dessicant rather than heat.
