Dryden & Palmer’s 100% Cane Sugar Rock Candy Crystals for Cold Remedies

Before becoming a popular treat on a stick, Rock Candy used to be a common cold medicine. For centuries it has been recognized as having marked therapeutic and preservative qualities.  In fact, in the West, sugar was used only as a medicine or preservative until people “discovered” that it also made a sweet treat – sometime in the middle of the 18th century. 

Made by a process of crystallization, the same process that produces quartz and diamonds – with a different ingredient, 100% Cane Sugar Rock Candy Crystals is the purest form of sugar available. In rocky candy, all impurities are excluded as large crystals form. 

There are many references to what we now call Rock Candy in literature.  There are several references to it in the poems of the Persian poet Jalai-ad-Din Rumi, who lived in Turkey in the middle 1200’s.  One early English reference in 1584 seems to sum up the virtues of Rock Candy where it is quoted “White sugar is not so good for phlegume, as that which is called Sugar Candie.”  And Shakespeare, in Henry IV, (1596) referred to its therapeutic value as a throat soother for long winded talkers.

During the late 1800’s, there were several Rock Candy companies in the USA supplying various forms of crystals and syrups as cough-cold remedies.  In addition, vast amounts were used in saloons.  Every bar had its own version of “Rock & Rye” – Rock Candy dissolved in rye whiskey. These drinks were advertised to cure their patrons’ colds.

In the early 1900’s alcohol consumption became illegal and prescription and over-the-counter medicines became more common. Dryden & Palmer was the only rock candy industry to survive this time.

For this reason, we offer Dryden & Palmer’s 100% Cane Sugar Rock Candy Crystals in our pharmacy today.