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 has been replaced by fetid odors of tobacco mixed with I don’t know what nauseating mustiness.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)

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.