Ammonia coke

In Jean Stafford’s novel The Mountain Lion (1947), a brothel owner asks a boy to go to the drugstore and get her “a package of Luckies and an ammonia coke.” Luckies still probably need no footnote, but what’s an ammonia [C]oke?

Here’s an explanation.

And here’s a well-known scene from The Best Years of Our Lives, in which a fascist falls onto a drugstore display case and the store manager calls for help: “Bring some aromatic spirits of ammonia, iodine, and bandages.”

Related reading
All OCA Jean Stafford posts (Pinboard)

[New York Review Books reissued The Mountain Lion in 2010. And just in case: Luckies are Lucky Strikes, cigarettes.]