If you think drug addiction is a recent problem, think again! When I read Frankenstein recently I found dr. Victor Frankenstein used laudanum (an alcoholic tincture of opium), and I thought it would make a good post.
A drink of laudanum was made of 10% opium and 90% alcohol, and flavoured with cinnamon or saffran. It was first used by the ancient Greeks, and in the 19th century mostly used as painkiller, sleeping pill, or tranquilizer. It was cheaper then poppy oil and could be drank like you’d drink scotch. It took a while for the Victorian to figure out the negative side effect, only in 1919 the production and export of opium was prohibited, and in 1928 a law was passed that prohibited use.
(Source, in Dutch)
Wikipedia’s list of laudanum-users is so incredibly long, it makes no sense to copy it. Here’s some notable users: Lord Byron (of course!), Kate Chopin (from the ‘The Story of an Hour’ I linked you to recently), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe.
In literature, it’s mentioned in:
Mary Shelley’s character Victor Frankenstein uses laudanum to help him sleep after the death of his friend, Henry Clerval.
In Jack Finney’s Time and Again, the main character, Si Morley, wonders if a live baby in an 1882 display case has been “doped up with one of the laudanum preparations I’d seen advertised in Harpers.”
The character Cassy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin kills one of her children with laudanum to prevent it from growing up in slavery.
In Charles Dickens’ novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood it is the drink of choice for the sinister uncle Jasper.
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula Lucy Westenra’s maids are poisoned (though not killed) by Dracula with a dose of laudanum put into wine.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the poem fragment Kubla Khan immediately on waking from a laudanum-induced dream.
So, it was a pretty popular drug. In fact: Innumerable Victorian women were prescribed the drug for relief of menstrual cramps and vague aches and used it to achieve the pallid complexion associated with tuberculosis (frailty and paleness were particularly prized in females at the time). Nurses also spoon-fed laudanum to infants. The Pre-Raphaelite muse Elizabeth Siddal died of a laudanum overdose. (Here’s the Wiki article.)
Hi! My name is Geerte, I'm a researcher of Nineteenth century history from the Netherlands. This blog is where I write about my favourite subject. Feel free to browse around!
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
Karen Halls
[…] Opium – Opium desire or a dream wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt […]
Laudanum, Absinth, Couchsyrop with Cocaine (invented around the same time)… They don’t rever to that period as “The Great Binch” for nothing.
The favored way to consume Laudanum was adding a few drops to a glass of Absinth, to give the Absinth some extra kick, as shown in the opening sequence of the movie “From Hell” (with Johnny Depp chasing down Jack the Ripper).
Coleridge wrote most of his work completely out of his head. The story I know of Kubla-Khan was Coleridge awoke in a field after a week of binging with the poem in his hand, not remember writing it or how it ended… that is why it was never finished, he didn’t remember how anymore.
Karen, thank you for your support! I have a fun post for this sunday, I hope, so keep an eye on your feedreader :)
merde! je commence à flipper! en couple et mariée depuis 10 ans, je crains le jour ou la roue tournera pour moi!;o) blague à part, je suis 100% d&c;#3a9cord. on ne sait jamais de quoi demain sera fait, et rien n'est jamais acquis!
I LOVE this blog! Many of the dolls I make are inspired by the Victorian era…I recently made a little aesthete inspired by Wilde.
I’m currently taking a course in Fin-de-Siecle literature and we just finished reading Dracula…I loved it. Have you ever read Thomas DeQuincy’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater?” Another Victorian tale of druggedness…and I just read an article about how EA Poe was fed laudunum by his nurse when he was a baby.
Black-Eyed Suzy, thank you! Your blog is wonderful too, I’ll include it in my blogroll :) I still have to read Thomas deQuincy, it seems a very interesting book!
“Perilous Play” (1869) by Louisa May Alcott
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/Texts/perilous.html
erowid.org/plants
http://www.erowid.org/plants
The Fitz Hugh Ludlow hypertext library
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow
We watched From Hell last night and I wanted to find the relevance to the Laudanum being added to the Absinth having just added it to our collection recently which brought me here via Google.
I wanted to add this because I too seemed to have remembered the scene as Dermut mentions it on MArch 2nd 2008 as well… being at the opening.
Wrong.
The opening scene is him preparing Opium then smoking it.
The Absinth scene comes in later, I thought after seeing the opening scene I was then mistaken with my memory till it shows up later maybe 1/2 way into the movie pretty much as I and Dermut remembered it.
[…] had no idea laudanum was such a party drug. And adding it to absinthe..? Beneath their cravats and corsets, they […]
Hi.
Thanks for your interesting site.
The Victorians must have been as high as kites.
I am a Dickens fan and have just found the film about Edwin Drood on you tube. It really does have the most sinister characters in it.
The Victorians must have been as high as kites.
And drunk. Life sucked back then, when doctors thought that washing their hands was a bad idea, and Europeans pumped their drinking water from wells near their “waste: streams.
Thus, opium to dull the pain and beer+whiskey (alcohol and boiled water meant that it was the cleanest water available in cities).
(The along comes coffee & tea, stimulants which require one to boil water!)
[…] that is some old man! An opium addict no less. And he drank Laudanum (which I had never heard of) which is an alcoholic tincture of opium that was popular in the 19th […]
[…] moms have been self-medicating given a emergence of time. During a Victorian era, laudanum (an alcoholic whiff of opium) served as a tranquilizer, sleeping pill, and menstrual cramp remedy. Opium was used in ancient […]
I’m taking Laudanum on Saturday night with a few friends for the first time …looking forward to it :-))
yup, that sounds SMART. you fucking idiot. look up some of the god damned side effects.
Can’t be near as bad as your damn mouth! That is for sure. Besides, the opium trade is good and well thanks to the us gov and cia and those guarding it for their “masters” in crowns and most likely your past leaders profits…idiot.
Not a good idea one way path to misery it’s smack
Mary Lincoln also was a laudunam user for her migraines. She also used clora hydrate….the use of both of these at the same time might explain her hallucinations and irratic behavior?
A very interesting read! I had no idea laudanum use went back as far as ancient Greece. It makes sense as of course the poppy has existed long before the human race and the ancient Greeks did love their wine! I suppose its only a matter of time until someone utilises the property’s of both; about two thousand years ought to do it!
I was also intrigued by the comments made about absinthe; I’ve written a post about the drink on my blog, having undertaken large exposures to it for the purposes of journalistic accuracy.
Keep up the good work! Rowan.
Ether is used in Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood’.
Thank you for a great post – so intresting and fact-filled. Another famous laudanum addict was Dickens’s friend and fellow novelist Wilkie Collins. Laudanum features in a number of his books: in the thrilling sensation novel, Armandale, his murderous villainess Lydia Gwilt (fabulous name) is a raging addict! Sherlock Holmes on the other hand famously dislikes opiates and prefers to inject a seven per cent solution of cocaine – different strokes, I suppose!
you folks act like it’s such an “awful” thing, plants were put on God’s green earth for the benefit of man. The only thing is that some in “authority” seem to think the themselves are God and so outlaw it for everyone else and yet use it themselves and send our armies in to guard it. Grow up people and open your eyes to the truth for once instead of acting like little puritans who haven’t a clue what the hell is really going on around you.
plants were put on God’s green earth for the benefit of man.
You’re sooo right! Rhus radicans is just the most wonderful plant on all God’s green earth!
Typo alert: I meant Armadale!
Just read a gothic romance by Dorothy Eden where laudanum is featured. Nasty stuff
Just watched the Showtime movie “Creation” about Charles Darwin. It emphasized his hallucinations and even showed him preparing and drinking laudanum.
I’ve nominated you for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award, if you’d like to participate, have a look!
http://www.booksatmiddlemayfarm.wordpress.com! I’ve written a book about a morphine/laudanum addicted soldier and his family post US Civil War. Addiction is very old and interesting.
OPIUM has been around through all the ages. Just in different forms.
[…] twenty years after the war, Lucius is addicted to laudanum, Roger carries the deep psychic wounds of an artist confronted with butchery, and Cass uses alcohol […]
[…] *Laudanum: a tincture of opium. For an interesting note on the subject, see Laudanum, and its many uses on the Victorian Era blog. Wikipedia, also has a discussion on the […]
[…] Bizarre cures. With marijuana, cocaine and opium (or Laudenum) all legal in the pharmacies it’s a wonder anyone got anything done. Laudanum was also known […]
I am doing a thesis on this subject. Does anyone else have any info on MCEscher or Freud using the drug?
In 2013. War seems to be even more inevitable than ever before, it would seem that our leaders and other very high ranking people in the world today. They kind of like the idea of all the massive money to be made from war. Have people thought what the average Joe, is going to do for medications and other ailments. When you’re Dr. cannot be reached, the pharmacy is destroyed. There is no electric to maintain the average household. It is said laudanum can help with dysentery, bring down fevers and comfort people in drastic situations. Our leaders love to scare everybody with the prospect of war, but nobody seems to be taken them serious at this time.
One Salty Dog.
[…] of us, unlike many past artists and writers – Byron, and Keats, amongst others, whose opium and laudanum use fuelled the fire of their poetry – somehow fail to become artistic geniuses under the […]
[…] 19th century cough and cold remedy, “Dr. John Collis Brown’s Chlorodyne,” contained laudanum, which is a mixture of opium, cannabis and chloroform. The medicine was also marketed as a cure […]
it was used for teething babies and also menstrual cramps and also many women used laudanum for abortions just a little fact that was not in the above information
Just watched the movie A Royal Affair, where Laudanum was referenced… and had to look it up cos i had no idea what it was… how interesting! I didn’t know the Victorian era was so naughty ;)
[…] mills in Fall River, Massachusetts, Victoria Lincoln described parents dosing their children with laudanum at bedtime so that they would sleep through the night. As horrified as we might be by the thought […]
[…] more on Laudanum see: Laudanum, and its many uses or […]
[…] Also see: Laudanum and its many uses […]
[…] https://19thcentury.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/laudanum/>; […]
Would the victorian women have called it laudanum when they spoke of it? Not many online references on how they talked about it in day to day life.
Reblogged this on Quaker City in 1840's to 1860's and commented:
E.A.Poe and his drinking buddy (social drinkers today) Henry Beck Hirst both loved Absinthe and Laudanum.
Felt so hopeless looking for answers to my que.iions..sunttl now.
[…] was alcohol sipped in secret. There was valium – and laudanum in the early days. There might be lashing out at the children when the husband or society did the […]
Ingsihts like this liven things up around here.
Of the panoply of website I’ve pored over this has the most verytica.
What an enthralling read :) Opiates through the ages is such an interesting topic x
My uncle says that in the late 1950s, he and his friends would pour medical laudanum into a small dish (like used for tea cups), burn off the alcohol, scrape out the opium residue with crackers then eat it.
Solomon Northrup, 12 Years A Slave, was drugged and given belladonna or laudanum in his alcholic drinks and sold into slavery. He didn’t get drunk as many have thought. The medicine made him very sick.
[…] world that lives in the bogs of emerald Ireland. He did not miss out on the London signature laudanum parties, dissolving in the grand delirium tremens, dancing with the naughty green […]
Dude, right on there brhtoer.
Wow! We know of so few people that have even thought about this concept of letting the land rest on the seventh year. I sounds like God is teaching you much! It is certainly not an easy road your family has chosen, but it is a faith building one! May you grow greatly!
I also found the use of the word ‘laudanum’ in the book – ‘Anne of Windy Poplars’. This is how I came to your site. Thanks for posting the information.
Rudrani (age 8)
[…] a long and painful convalescence. In the nineteenth century, the medication of the day was laudanum, a morphine-based opiate. Elliott became addicted. Coupled with his increasing alcoholism, it evolved into a serious and […]
My gr gr grandmother’s sister died of laudanum poisoning in 1867. Not sure why she was taking it…but she also had a daughter that was considered “an imbecile” (census taker’s wording) in the 1871 census. Could be a connection. Your info is very interesting, thank you.
I suppose it’s just coincidence that natural plants anybody could grow that provide natural painkilling and countless other benefits and cures for mankind, were made illegal and demonized by men in suits. Whilst the same men in suits made “patented” pharmaceuticals multi billion dollar industries. Don’t believe the hype! search YouTube for “Rick Simpson Run For The Cure”
“I suppose it’s just coincidence that natural plants anybody could grow …”
have
(a) inconsistent pharmaceutical yields, and
(b) other Evil Chemicals in them besides the actual pharmaceutical,
(c) sometimes aren’t as effective as their Big Parma derivatives.
Study, for example, morphine and aspirin, and why they are more effective than chewing opium or drinking wllow bark tea.
Looking for laudanum
An extremely interesting and useful post….but your English really needs some help. Please see (below) how I’ve rewritten this sentence: It was cheaper then (should be ‘than’) poppy oil and could be drank (should be drunk) like you’d drink scotch (should be: as one would drink scotch)….etc… It would be so much better if properly rewritten. :-)
It was cheaper than poppy oil and could be drunk as one would drink scotch. It took a while for the Victorians to work out the negative side effects; in 1919 the production and export of opium was prohibited, and in 1928 a law was passed that prohibited its use.
Except one of the sentences in your rewrite is a no-no taught in far back as 10th grade english class. Let me teach you then!
Victorians took awhile to work out the negative side effects
Starting a sentence with a vague “it” huh? Please dont criticize so readily if you dont know completely what you are talking about. :-)
Need to find, make some laudanum.
So has anyone heard of Ibugain?
Another use for laudanum: As an anesthetic prior to cutting one’s throat.
Shocking Suicide of a St. Louis Millionaire
From the St. Louis Democrat – 1861.
At about five o’clock last evening the painful discovers was made that P. Dexter Tiffany, Esq., an old and wealthy citizen of St. Louis, had committed suicide in his room, No. 94, at the Planter’s Hotel.
On the bureau, some seven feet from the bed, lay a bloody razor, the handle being wound about and firmly fastened with a white handkerchief. One of the drawers of the bureau was partly open, and in it was an ounce vial freshly emptied of laudanum. Large drops of blood were strewn on the carpet from the bureau to the bedside. It was evident that Mr. Tiffany had arisen from his bed, proceeded to the bureau, prepared the razor as described, stood before the glass, and completely severed the right jugular vein. Then he sprang back to the bed, drew the clothes over him, leaned back his head and neck to the right, and resigned himself to death, Whether he had drank the laudanum just before using the razor, or some hours previously, could only be conjectured.
[…] hallucinatory Adventures in Wonderland which were the product of Lewis Carroll’s imagination presumably being addled with laudanum, a tincture of 10% opium and 90% alcohol, and flavoured with cinnamon or […]
Curiousity about laudanum lead me here, very interesting to fill in the gaps. I’m reading fictional book “Lost & Found Girl” by Catherine King. Forced upon the character leading to addiction & subsequent withdrawal. Astounded by how little has really changed! In fact it’s no wonder we now have Acts of control in our lives, the way it used to be!
Just watching the film “from hell” with Johnny Depp putting 5 drops of laudanum into a melting sugarcube dripping into a glass of absinthe. Good film
“So has anyone heard of ibugain”
I believe you mean Ibogaine. Ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive substance found in plants in the Apocynaceae family such as Tabernanthe iboga, Voacanga africana and Tabernaemontana undulata. It is a psychedelic with dissociative properties. Its medical use has not been approved in the US due to its many possible side effects including death. Though it is used in some countries as a form of treatment for drug addiction.
Not the answer I was expecting to the question posed to you.
I.e. Where is Laudanum obtained from ?
As well as Opium-Based from the Papaver genus – how many other plants contain this substance – is what I was trying to find some other information on.
Very interesting, where might one find this hidden drink today? Ya Hahaha
[…] their fix, though. By then, opiates were the main ingredient in everything from teething powders to analgesics for menstrual cramps. Patent medicines so-called because they often contained secret patented ingredients flooded the […]
[…] “… By 1890, opiates were the main ingredient in everything from teething powders to analgesics for menstrual cramps. Patent medicines – so-called because they often contained secret “patented” ingredients – […]
[…] Laudanum, and its many uses […]