Laudanum Poison! Dose Three months old, 2 drops; one year old, 4 drops; four years old, 6 drops; ten years old, 14 drops; twenty years old, twenty drops. Steelman and Archer, Wholesale Druggists, No. 117 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

‘A room like a dream, a really spiritual room, where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly tinted rose and blue.

‘Here the soul bathes in indolence, scented with desire and regret.-It seems like a twilight, the pale blue and rose, a voluptuous dream in an eclipse.

‘The shapes of the furnishings are long, prostrate, languid. The furnishings are dreamlike; they seem endowed with somnambulist life, like vegetal and mineral existence. The fabrics speak a muted language, like flowers, like skies, like sunsets.

‘No artistic abominations on the walls. Compared with pure dream, and unanalyzed impression, all definite, all representational art is blasphemy. Here everything has abundant light with the delicious dark of harmony…

‘To what well-wishing demon do I owe this ambiance of mystery, of silence, peace, and these perfumes’ O blessedness! What we generally call life, even in its happiest unfolding, has not one thing in common with the supreme life I am knowing now and savoring minute by minute, second by second!

‘No! There are no more minutes; there are no more seconds. Time has disappeared. Eternity reigns, an eternity of bliss!

‘But a loud, terrific knocking shakes the door, and, as in a hellish dream, I feel as though I just took a pickaxe in my stomach…

‘And the perfume of another world that intoxicated my perfected sensibility, alas! has been replaced by fetid odors of tobacco mixed with I don’t know what nauseating mustiness. Now I’m breathing the rancid stink of desolation.

‘In this world, so narrow yet so filled with disgust, only one thing makes me smile; the vial of laudanum, my old and terrible lover; like all my lovers, alas! fertile with caresses and betrayals.’

Charles Baudelaire, trans. William H. Crosby, ‘La Chambre Double’ (‘The Double Room’), Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen)

Destilacion Especial Absenta Calidad Superior

Absinthe is a potent, emerald-green liquor flavored with several herbs, the most significant of which is wormwood. Wormwood contains a chemical called thujone, which structurally resembles THC, the active ingrediant in cannabis. Because of its reputed deletarious effects, absinthe was made illegal in most Western countries around the First World War (although it remains legal in Spain and the Czech Republic). Before this, however, it was a popular drink, especially among artists such as Ernest Hemingway, who praised it for its ‘opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.’

Absinthe was seldom drank straight up; rather, it was diluted through an elaborate, almost ritual process (incidentally demonstrated in a scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula). A special perforated spoon would be placed on top of a glass of absinthe, and a sugar cube placed on the spoon. Cool water would then be slowly poured over the sugar, melting it and turning the absinthe from its original emerald into a milky-green color.

Absinthe is still sold in the United States, sans wormwood. It is called anise and the most famous brand is Pernod Fils. It has a minty, licorice taste.

‘The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things. One night I was left sitting, drinking alone, and very late in the Cafe Royal, and I had just got into the third stage when a waiter came in with a green apron and began to pile the chairs on the tables, ‘Time to go, sir,’ he called to me. Then he brought in a watering can and began to water the floor. ‘Time’s up, sir. I’m afraid you must go now, sir.’

‘Waiter, are you watering the flowers’ I asked but he didn’t answer.

‘What are your favorite flowers, waiter’ I asked again. ‘Now, sir, I must really ask you to go now, time’s up,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m sure that tulips are your favorite flowers,’ I said, and as I got up and passed out into the street I felt the heavy tulip heads brushing against my shins.”

-Oscar Wilde in John Fothergill, My Three Inns, 1921

100 Compressed Tablets No. 524 Lead and Opium Wash Opium Extract ‘ Gr. Lead Acetate 5 Grs. To prepare ‘Lead and Opium Wash’ dissolve one tablet in a fluid ounce of warm water. The amount of warm water may be increased if desired. A slight residue will always be noticable, which is due to the use of insoluble diluents in making these tablets. Poison Parke Davis & Co. Detroit, Mich

‘While in my sophomore year in college I read DeQuincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater and also his later utterence, Suspira de Profundus. The first essay kindled within me a desire to experience for myself the grand dreams to which the drug gave birth in him. The latter did not warn me-I had not the remotest intention of becoming an opium eater, nor could a special divine revelation have then made me believe that my sighs would ever ascend from the midnight depths. I procured one or two grains of crude opium, and took it ‘just for fun,’ as I should have then said.

‘The effects were delightful indeed! I had plucked the fruit of a forbidden tree, but it was very sweet to the taste, and seemed to open my eyes. I did not know that with the first taste, there was thrown lightly around me a coil of the serpent whose folds were at last to envelop me with rings of terrible strength. From time to time I repeated the experiment, but at considerable intervals. It seemed to me that I had found a new source of mental inspiration, and that I need no longer be dependent on whatever fickle god or goddess it may be who presides over the mind and directs its varying conditions.

‘Simply by swallowing a small lump of opium-or a minute powder of morphia, which I soon came to use generally, instead of gum-I was (or rather I believed that I was) lifted up into high regions of intellectuality and had vivid imaginings. I therefore gradually came to use morphine when pressed by literary work. In time, I had frequently to address public meetings extemporaneously and I found that a small dose of the drug took away the nervous embarrassment, and enabled me to face an audience without physical or mental tremor. I did not percieve, till afterward, that the influence which prevented preliminary trepidation, also prevented that natural, healthy and fruitful excitement which enables a speaker to ‘think on his legs,’ take advantage of the varying moods of his listeners, and to throw into his speech all the weight of his individuality and character. A speaker whose oratory is inspired by morphine may indulge in what are called ‘flights of eloquence’ and thus astonish ‘the ears of groundlings’-but, if not ‘Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing,’ it will be more ornamental than useful; it will exhibit more display than power and effect.’

From Leslie Keeley, The Morphine Eater; or From Bondage to Freedom, 1881

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4 Fld. Ozs. No. 129 Fluid Extract Kola N.F. 5th Edition The Dried Cotyledons of Cola Nitid(‘) Standard: 0.85 to 1.(‘) Gm. Of Caffeine per 100 cc. Average Dose- 1 fluiddrachm (4 cc.) To prepare syrup, non-official Rx Fluid Extract’4 fld ozs. (120 cc.) Syrup’12 fld ozs. (360 cc.) Mix. John Wyeth & Brother Incorporated Philadelphia

Kola nut is a potent natural source of caffeine. John Pemberton, an Atlanta chemist, began selling ‘French Wine Cola,’ a cocaine wine, in 1885. Perhaps due to prohibitionist pressures, he substituted kola extract for the wine and changed the name to ‘Coca-Cola’ an intellectual beverage and temperance drink.’ It contained the ‘valuable tonic and nerve stimulant properties of the coca plant and cola (or kola) nuts.’

Angelo Mariani, an Italian businessman, became interested in the stimulating properties of the coca leaf in the 1860s. He soon became the world?s largest importer of coca, as well as one of its foremost scholars. His most popular product was a Bordeaux wine called Vin Mariani or Coca Mariani, which contained 0.1 grains of cocaine per ounce. By the 1890s, the demand for Coca Mariani had made him a millionaire, and he was able to publish a book of enthusiastic testimonials from hundreds of artists and political figures including Jules Verne, Henrik Ibsen, William McKinley, Thomas Edison, and Pope Leo XIII. His wildly successful product inspired scores of imitators, including John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola.

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Bottle: Glykeron Glyco-Heroin (Smith) Heroin content ‘ grain to fluid ounce Alcohol 3 ‘ per cent. Glyco-Heroin (Smith) embraces the most active antispasmodic, balsamic and expectorant agents. It possesses analgesic, dyspnea-dispelling, inflammation allating and mucus-liquefying properties in a remarkably high degree. The anodyne and antispasmodic influence of the preparation on the respiratory system renders it especially useful where cough is attended with pain, difficult breathing or laborious expectoration. Dose- The adult dose in one teaspoonful every two hours, or at longer intervals, as the individual case requires. For children of ten years or more, the dose is from one-quarter to one-half teaspoonful: for children of three years or more, five to ten drops. This product is designed expressly for the use of physicians. Martin H. Smith Co. Phamaceutical Chemists, New York.

Box: Glykeron Glyco-Heroin (Smith) For the Treatment of Cough Asthma Phthisis Pneumonia Bronchitis Laryngitis Whooping Cough and Kindred Affections This package sealed and Adopted October 1910. Sixteen Fluid Ounces Net.

‘You want a blow too” John asked.

‘I hardly knew what he meant. ‘Blow’ was the drug addict’s term for a shot of his dope.

‘Go ahead, it’ll pep you up,’ John urged. ‘Give him some of your joy powder, Monk…’

‘You’d better buy a few extra blows for yourselves. You fellows are getting a yen, and you’ll find it’s something you can’t fool around with. All you have to do is go to Warner’s drug store on Thirty-eighth Street and ask for a dollar’s worth of heroin tablets. You can squash ‘em to a powder by rolling a pencil over them like this”he demonstrated, using his pencil like a rolling pin”and you’ll get the same kick as you do out of powder…’

‘At last the strip of yellow light under the kitchen door vanished. I waited half an hour and then slipped into the bathroom. With the gas lighted and the door latched, I crushed one of my precious tablets on a newspaper by rolling the handle of the wash brush over it. It caked in a thin layer. I raked it with my forefinger and saw that it really was a fine powder. Lifting the paper to my nostrils, I inhaled the dust deeply. It had the same smell as John’s but lacked the sting.

‘The reaction was instantaneous. I relaxed and at the same time was intensely alive. I gazed with what I thought was new insight at the white-enameled iron tub, the shelf with a few medicine bottles, hair tonic, and empty fruit jar holding the family toothbrushes. These homely objects were about to confer a new meaning to my specially alerted brain. But before that could happen I became fascinated by the gas jet. The blue and yellow flames swayed and rippled in a draft through the crack at the top of the door, and in just a moment would merge into a wonderful pattern. Perhaps they did but my attention was distracted by the sound of voices across the air shaft. That would be the Neilsons. They talked so softly I could not hear any words, so I thought about their daughters, pretty kids with nice legs. I couldn’t keep my mind even on the Neilson girls’ legs for long…

‘I resolved that tomorrow my school work would begin to get back to its former standard. I would join one of the Cooper Union art classes. I would take that job with the firm on Dad’s mail route. I would knock ‘em dead with my drawings. I would be rich and famous and see the world.

‘I was almost sixteen now, and I was happy as I drifted off to sleep at last. But also, in the terrifying graphic slang of the drug addict, I was hooked.’

Leroy Street, I Was a Drug Addict, 1953

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16 Oz Firwein Trade Mark Alcohol 15% The Tilden Company Pharmicists and Chemists New Lebanon, N.Y and St. Louis, Mo. Established 1848 Incorporated 1893 Firwein Alcohol 15 Per Cent Expectorant ‘ Sedative ‘ Anti Spasmodic. A palatable preparation of abies balsamea pleasantly and effectively blended with the salts of Iodine and Bromine, held in solution with 15 per cent Alcohol. It may be given when Cod Liver Oil is indicated, and associated with it, thus forming a convenient and agreeable vehicle for the administration of the latter and it will be found to promote the efficiency of the oil. Dose ‘ One to two teaspoonfuls before meals, or oftener, though regulated by age or condition.

The word ‘bromide’ has come to mean ‘a commonplace remark or notion; platitude,’ or a ‘tiresome person; bore,’ due to its status as one of the first sedatives in the Western pharmacoepia.

Paregoric Dose Three days old, 2 drops One week old, 4 drops One month old, 6 drops One year old, 10 drops Five years old, 20 drops Adults, a teaspoonful. Prepared by A.H. Williams Co. Utica, N.Y.

100 Tablets Lemmon Quaalude-300 (Methaqualone) Each tablet contains: Methqualone 300 mg. (2-methyl-3-0-tolyl-4(3H)-quinazolinone) Caution: Federal law prohibits dispensing without prescription Lemmon Company Sellerville, Pa. Usual adult dose: For sleep. One-half or one tablet at bedtime.

Solution Cocaine Hydrochlorate (Cocaine muriate) (Pure) 4 Per Cent Robinson, Apothecary, Masonic Temple, Memphis, Tenn.

Sherlock Holmes took the bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morroco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable punture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

‘Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject; but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

‘Which is it today,’ I asked, ‘morphia or cocaine”

‘He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened.

‘It is cocaine,’ he said, ‘a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it”

‘No, indeed,’ I answered brusquely. ‘My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.’

‘He smiled at my vehemence. ‘Perhaps you are right, Watson,’ he said. ‘I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is of a small moment.’

”But consider!’ I said earnestly. ‘Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed’ Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.’

‘He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his fingertips together, and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

”My mind,’ he said, ‘rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, 1889

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