Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/02/14
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Of course, I could be completely wrong, as the following explanation sounds
equally plausible, or perhaps one is a garbled version of the other, or
something...
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cod1.htm
on 2/14/01 11:23 AM, Johnny Deadman at john@pinkheadedbug.com wrote:
> As far as I know it was a patent medicine in Britain in the late 1800s/early
> 1900s. I think it was a kind of cod liver oil or something that purported to
> be good for you (and no doubt tasted vile) but actually had no effect
> whatsoever. Anyways, as a result Cod's Wallop as it was known colloquially,
> became a kind of byword for stuff that was supposed to be good but wasn't, if
> you see what I mean. It's all a load of Cod's Wallop!
>
> I know this because I made a film about the foundation of the British National
> Heatlth Service to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and one of our interviewees
> was an extraordinarily old pharmacist who knew all about the stuff. (The
> coming of the NHS put a lot of patent medicines out of business, but the
> pharmacists did very well).
>
> This has been a public service announcement.
- --
Johnny Deadman
http://www.pinkheadedbug.com