And what about Opium?

From Heroin Century, by Tom Carnwath & Ian Smith

Opium has been with us almost forever, and up until about a century ago it had been consistently seen as one of the great benefits given to us by God. The Romans, for example, used it in a huge variety of tinctures, tablets, poultices and lozenges.

Modern use started with the famous sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus, who prescribed it to his patients mixed with alcohol and spices. He called this medicine 'laudanum' after the Latin word laudandum, something worthy of praise. Over the next 400 years it was a favourite medicine throughout Europe. In the eighteenth century, an English physician claimed that

it causes promptitude, serenity, alacrity and expediteness in dispatching and managing business, assurance, ovation of the spirits, contempt of danger and magnanimity … it prevents and takes away grief, fear, anxieties, peevishness, fretfulness … it lulls, soothes and (as it were) charms the mind with satisfaction, acquiescence, contentation and equanimity.

Clearly a very useful medicine!

It became particularly popular in Britain in the nineteenth century, where yearly opium consumption increased from one pound per thousand people at the beginning of the century to over ten pounds at the end. Until the Pharmacy Act of 1868 it could be sold or purchased by anybody. In 1850 twenty-five drops of laudanum could be purchased for a penny from the corner shop, the pub, the market stall or even from the enterprising lady next door. Opium was the aspirin of the day, and was the everyday treatment for every type of ill, be it headache, rheumatism or a touch of the nerves.

It had an important part to play in child-care. Mothers used it to keep their children quiet, particularly when they went out to work all day in the mills, but also at night so as not to aggravate their neighbours in the crowded tenements. One respectable Manchester pharmacist regularly supplied 700 households with a 'quietener' containing 100 drops of laudanum to the ounce, and was able to do nicely by selling five gallons a week. Other similar medicines rejoiced in names such as Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup and a Pennyworth of Peace. Laudanum was also good at treating diarrhoea, which was endemic in unsanitary living quarters and would have been life-threatening to young children. Apart from use in medicine and child-care, laudanum was a popular tipple, particularly in the Fens. Opium also formed a popular ingredient of sweet-cakes and lozenges enjoyed by children.

And yet the Chinese continue to excoriate the Brits for selling them opium.