Designed to Thrill and Kill Dry Coughs (Parkinson's Kilkof)

Member Name: Nar2

Product:	Parkinson's Kilkof
Date:	01/07/08 (336 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sweet tasting - if you like liquourice - does what it says on the label. Longlasting. Cheap.

Disadvantages: Availability; slightly sticky, glass bottle.

Every year I always get a cold no matter what I do to combat getting the virus and this year seems no different with the exception that my lungs haven't yet started to get blocked. Everyone around me however has started coughing, which is a sure sign that a virus is going around as well as the cold air, where it seems Edinburgh and its surrounding areas have been colder than most. Four days later, my friend started to get a nasty cough. She reported that the cold itself had set into her lungs and throat to produce a tickly cough which just kept repeating itself and making her feel really ill. There were no sneezes, no blocked noses, or a headache or a fever - just this nasty dry tickly cough - which everyone seems to have at the moment. Nevertheless I was determined to fight the infection if I got it and it wasn't too long before I started getting a tickly dry cough!

To my nearest Pharmacy then, which in this case is a local Superdrug store. Usually whenever I have had a dry tickly cough in the past I've always spent the ridiculous and gone for a popular brand name such as Benilyn but this time since money was tight, I tried to find my second popular cough medicine, Co-Op Linctus for dry tickly coughs, but as memory served me correctly, I recall taking the Linctus out of pure addiction as it had no medicinal factors, being of a lime cordial type and probably worked due to my psychological sweet tasting factor!


Against prices such as £2 here and £3-68 there for better known brands, I found a bottle of Parkinson's Kilkof cough medicine for £1-69. I looked at the bottle carefully thinking how could something be so cheap? In my heart I may have been wishing it was Co-Op's addictive lime flavoured cordial based cough medicine but the fact that it looked like a brown syrup confirmed my worst fears that it would taste pretty awful.


Well for £1-69 what you get is a 150ml brown glass bottle with a white clinical screw metal top. The front of the bottle is red at the bottom with a contrasting yellow at the top, almost like the colour of sunset as the colour changes from the bottom to red at the top. At the top lies a tiny picture of a man and the date "est. 1849" with "Parkinson's" written in black lettering. Below this and in the top middle of the label there is a white strip with black capital letters which states "KILKOF," in large black capitals whilst underneath shows in white lettering, "Oral solution for the relief of coughs, colds and sore throats."

The product claims to be "...soothing, warming and has a mild expectorant action..."

Underneath the blurb there is then small black writing which indicates the directions; briefly adults take two 5ml spoons of the product, for children from 10 to 14 to take one 5ml spoon of the liquid and can be taken three times a day and a further fourth time just before going to bed. It does sound remarkably familiar though against one of my old time favourites, "Buttercup" syrup but that product seems to be £3 for the same sized bottle.


Screwing off the top of the bottle reveals a smell of mixed ingredients such as treacle and honey which is two of the contents actually listed. There is also a small degree of menthol which has been added as well as liquorice. Let it be said that to my minor knowledge in liquid medicines taken aurally that this product seems to be a traditional preparation rather than wonder drug packed chemicals. The best before date applied to this bottle is July 2009.


The taste is thick and gloopy, the look of the solution is brown and indeed syrupy again no thanks in part to its contents. But the taste is pleasant enough, quite sweet and leaves an aftertaste of liquid liquorice around the mouth once the medicine slides down the throat. It does however leave a warm path as it coats the sides of my mouth and my throat feels warm once the solution has been swallowed. Where once I was scared of the bitter content purely based on the look of the sauce, I'm delighted that it doesn't taste bitter or sour at all!


I've yet to give up smoking and with the use of this medicine, taken once in the morning and once at night, my dry tickly cough no longer rears its head in the mornings when I smoke. The cough has subsided a bit but it only subsides if you take Kilkof all the time rather than once or twice a week. I have also cut down the amount of cigarettes I smoke and have taken the medicine to school with me in case I feel the tickle starting up again - but for the week I've taken it, the cough concerned has only appeared a few times, but importantly there is no soreness or feeling of a "hacking" when the cough starts before I bought this solution.


Thanks to its budget price, no plastic spoon comes with this product and I use a plastic teaspoon or a standard teaspoon for measurement which is NOT 5ml but around 3ml in size. I have one of those shot glasses which list ml measurements which gives me the exact amount I need.

The nature of the syrup means that the moment it is angled towards the spoon, some of the solution does drip down the sides of the bottle which then becomes sticky. Again thanks to the budget price and traditional preparation it could well be the fact that the bottle's design and old fashioned neck top means spills are frequent but a damp cloth wiped down the bottle usually cures the problem of sticky glass.


Availability of this product seems to be a downside to what looks like a traditional cough and sore throat preparation; against most research online of who Parkinsons really are, the moment my South African friend saw it, she exclaimed that it was a well known South African product. Although I'd say this formula doesn't cure coughs completely it does cut back the initial tickle of a dry cough as well as warming up the throat as the bottle states. You will find it at Superdrug however as the store sells this amongst their higher priced ranges of cough expectorants and Linctus. It may be old fashioned but it goes to show that traditional methods still have a place in the market. Thanks for reading. ©Nar2 2008.

Summary: A more traditional preparation with very little chemicals. And it works!