The Ubiquitous Usage of the Pharmaceutical Panacea

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nBombastus kept a devil’s bird
Shut in the pummel of his sword,
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks.

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n These lines are taken from Canto Three of SamuelnButler’s Hudibras, and refer to the reputation Paracelsus had acquired innthe popular imagination in the century following his death. In a note in then1744 edition of Hudibras, Zachary Grey writes of Paracelsus’s pioneeringnuse of opium,

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n“Opium being cold in the fourth Degree the Ufe of it, throughnfear, was very much neglected; infomuch that by his Rafhnefs and Boldnefs innthe Ufe of thefe, he performed many Cures, which the regular Phyficians couldnnot do.”

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Samuel Butler – Hudibras – 1744 edition

nThe legend is that, rather than a ‘devil’s bird’,nParacelsus kept opium in the handle of his sword, opium that he had acquired onna visit to Constantinople. He discovered that the alkaloids in opium could beneffectively dissolved in alcohol, which is the basis of a tincture called bynParacelsus labdanum, and by later physicians laudanum, from thenLatin laudare – ‘to praise’.

Paracelsus / William Salmon – Medica Practica – 1692

nParacelsus’s labdanum also containednamber, musk, gold leaf, crushed pearls and other substances in addition to thenopium but nevertheless he used it to effect many cures. In October 1601, andiary entry by John Manningham says,

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n“There is a certaine kinde of compoundncalled Laudanum which may be had at Dr, Turner’s apothecary in Bishopsgatenstreate; the virtue of it is verry soverraigne to mitigate anie payne; yt willnfor a tyme lay a man in a sweete trans, as Dr. Parry told me he tried in anfever and his sister Mrs. Turner in her childbirth.”

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Thomas Sydenham

nIn the 1660s, DrnThomas Sydenham produced a variation on the recipe, using sherry wine, opium,nsaffron, cinnamon and cloves, and Sydenham’s Laudanum became an earlynproprietary medicine. Sydenham wrote,

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n“And here I cannot but break out innpraise of the great God, the Giver of all good things, who hath granted to thenhuman race, as a comfort in their afflictions, no medicine of the value ofnopium, either in regard to the number of diseases that it can control, or its efficiencynin extirpating them.”

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Thomas Sydenham – Praxis Medica – 1695

nSydenham was not alone in his eulogizing of opium, itnwas regarded as a panacea for all ills and prescribed freely for whatever ailednyou. Sometimes, things did not go according to plan, as in the case of anScottish edition of Buchan’s Domestic Medicine. This was an immenselynpopular home guide, running to nineteen editions in the author’s lifetime,namounting to 80,000 copies, but the edition in question misprinted onenprescription that recommended one hundred drops of laudanum as one hundred ouncesnof the drug.

William Buchan – Domestic Medicine – 1825 edition

nA similar sort of mistake may have been responsible for thendeath of the French philosopher Voltaire. Even at the age of eighty-three,nVoltaire continued to work with feverish intensity and one night, as he wrotenlong into the small hours, he drank ten or twelve cups of coffee to keepnhimself awake, (in his youth, Voltaire would drink up to thirty cups a day butnin old age he took no more than three cups). The stimulant was too much for himnand he found it impossible to sleep properly, so when a friend recommendednlaudanum, a servant was sent to an apothecary to purchase a bottle.

Voltaire

nThe servantnwas not told how much to bring, and Voltaire drank the lot and went to bed. Thenfollowing day he was found to be suffering from the overdose and although andoctor was sent for, he could do little and the philosopher died several daysnlater. Laudanum was prescribed for headache, it was prescribed for toothache,nit was prescribed for any ache. It was consumed in vast quantities by men, womennand children, it was given to babies to make them sleep and relieve teethingnpains. It was so widely used, the pharmacopoeias of the eighteenth andnnineteenth centuries are frightening to read, so quickly and readily do theynresort to opiates.

The Gardener’s Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette – April 9 1853

nAnd the rest of the animal kingdom was not forgotten – anletter in The Gardener’s Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette of April 9^thn1853 advocates the use of laudanum for ailing sheep and lambs. In 1804,nmorphine, another opium derivative, was first isolated and distribution begannin 1817, with commercial sales starting ten years later, but laudanum remainednthe drug of choice as it was a liquid and easily taken, either directly ornmixed into another fluid, and was freely available over the counter, withoutnthe need of a doctor’s prescription. It was also highly addictive.

Laudanum – Edinburgh Dispensatory – 1796

nA list ofnthe great and the good of Victorian society will include a very high proportionnof laudanum users – Byron (inevitably), Shelley, Keats, Dickens, WilkienCollins, Thomas de Quincey, Lewis Carroll, Florence Nightingale, Queen Victorianet al. Coleridge was an addict – he favoured Kendal Black Drop, anpreparation of opium, vinegar, sugar and spices, which he mixed with hisnclaret. Dante Gabriel Rossetti mixed his laudanum with whisky; his wife,nElizabeth Siddal, committed suicide with an overdose of laudanum.

Thomas Sydenham – Opera Universa – 1705

nBecause ofnits ubiquity, we will never know how many ‘accidental’ overdoses of laudanumnwere actually suicides or murders, but to give some idea, in 1837-38, therenwere 543 cases of poisoning brought before the coroner’s court. Of these, 184nwere due to arsenic poisoning, whilst 200 were attributed to opiumnpreparations, 133 specifically due to laudanum; of these 200 deaths, 64 werenchildren and 41 of these (one fifth of the entire total) were overdoses ofncordials or medicines administered to the children by their mothers or nurses.nThese are investigated cases, so who can guess how many children died, or werengot rid of, with laudanum?

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nTomorrow, from bad to worse – the extent of Victorianndrug use.

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Those of you who are kind followers of this blog may be interested to know that this is my 400th post. Thank you for continuing to return.

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