smelling salts: are they still a thing?

goin thru my mum's and her mum's bric-a-brac, i have found two old school little bottles of smelling salts, and it occurred to me i have NEVER encountered the use of same in actual real life (inc.by my mum and her mum, in fact: they were neither of them very fainty types)

yes; they are still v v important in physical comedy

You can still get them; however, they can be dangerous to little children if they bite into them (they're ammonia based).

it's just ammonia and epsom salt, right?

They're a piece with catching a chill in the rain and then dying of pneumonia. For all the moral panic about obesity and people's sedentary lifestyles we seem to be a lot more robust than previous generations.

haha when i was a little kid i was waiting outside school in the torrential rain -- mum the last to come and pick me up, as usual -- and the headmaster drove past after locking up the building and everything and shouted at me: "go and shelter, you SILLY little boy"

and he was right because i did indeed get pneumonia and missed a school trip to the shropshire union canal i'd really been looking forward to!!

the bottle says: "active ingredients: ammonia, phenol, eucalyptol", and it works on "cold in the head, faintness, hay fever and nervous headache"

my family had some of these ina first aid kit that we kept in our car when I was a kid. I was just poking around there one day when I stymled across them. I had been reading some musician biography (Jim Morrison?) in which the subject consumed amyl nitrates. confusing the two, I followed the instructions for use on the package. it was profoundly unpleasant.

stumbled across them

yes i have not dared uncork these little bottles

They've probably lost all potency by now. My mother kept some 60's era smelling salts in the bathroom cabinet for ages and I remember that they didn't really smell of much after about 20 years.