19th Century Medicine By Barbara Goss

19^th Century Medicine

By Barbara Goss

   Laudanum was probably the most common medicine used for numerous ailments. Can you guess what was in it? It was used so frequently for every ailment, I thought it must have contained harmless ingredients. Not so.

   Laudanum is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight (the equivalent of 1% morphine).

   Reddish-brown and extremely bitter, laudanum contains almost all of the opium alkaloids, including morphine and codeine. Laudanum was historically used to treat a variety of conditions, but its principal use was as a pain medication and cough suppressant. Until the early 20th century, laudanum was sold without a prescription and was a constituent of many patent medicines. Today, laudanum is recognized as addictive and is strictly regulated and controlled as such throughout most of the world. The United States Uniform Controlled Substances Act, for one example, lists it on Schedule II.

   By the 19th century, laudanum was used in many patent medicines to "relieve pain ... to produce sleep ... to allay irritation ... to check excessive secretions ... to support the system ... and as a tranquillizer." The limited pharmacopoeia of the day meant that opium derivatives were among the most effective of available treatments, so laudanum was widely prescribed for ailments from colds to meningitis to cardiac diseases, in both adults and children. Laudanum was used during the yellow fever epidemic.

   Innumerable Victorian women were prescribed the drug for relief of menstrual cramps and vague aches. Nurses also spoon-fed laudanum to infants. The Romantic and Victorian eras were marked by the widespread use of laudanum in Europe and the United States. Mary Todd Lincoln, for example, the wife of the US president Abraham Lincoln, was a laudanum addict, as was the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was famously interrupted in the middle of an opium-induced writing session of Kubla Khan by a "person from Porlock." Initially a working class drug, laudanum was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage.

Cocaine for Children?

   Cocaine was legal, even as late as this ad (1885), and was not considered harmful in moderate doses. Many other drugs, now restricted by law, were also legal then, including opium, which was sold under city permit on the streets of Victoria.

   In the nineteenth century many substances were used as medicines, some of which are now known to be harmful over the long term, such as mercury and lead. "Patent medicines", like these Cocaine Toothache Drops, were very popular and required no prescription; they were indeed "For sale by all druggists."

In my newest release, laudanum was used on a horse for pain.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VS565HL