Old Time Medicine

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When I was a child, I read numerous novels written over a century ago, such as Anne of Gables, Emily of New Moon, and The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery. Characters who got sick in these stories routinely mentioned taking laudanum. I hadn't heard of this medicine but assumed it was similar to our everyday modern drugs. So I was surprised to later learn that laudanum is essentially opium. 

Anne of Green Gables took opium?

She almost certainly did. From the 18th to the early 20th century, laudanum was a common drug found in most household medicine cabinets. People took it for headaches, coughs, diarrhea, and "female complaints." They fed drops to babies to ease teething pain and colic. 

Drawings reveal that the juice and seeds of the opium poppy were used as medicines in ancient Assyria and Egypt. Opium treatment emerged in Europe in the 1660s, when doctors dissolved opium in liquor and added cinnamon, cloves, other spices and sometimes honey to mask the plant's bitter taste to create a drug they called laudanum. The medicine worked quickly and more effectively than other drugs available at the time and came to feature in about 25 % of all prescribed medications. Opium was also the secret ingredient in 19th century drugs advertised and sold under innocuous brand names like Dover's Powder and Winslow's Soothing Syrup.

While doctors appreciated the value of opium, they were aware of the dangers. Overdose, called "acute poisoning," could be accidental or intentional. Opium was the most common method of suicide in the 1800s and too many drops of laudanum tragically resulted in infant deaths.

Addiction, or "chronic poisoning," was another problem. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's medical treatments led to a life-long laudanum addiction. His famous poem, "Kubla Khan," was inspired by an opium dream.  

  

The village of Nether Stowey, Somerset, UK, where Coleridge lived and wrote his poems "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

In the early 1880s, researchers isolated the active ingredient in opium and named it for Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep and dreams. Morphine is ten times as strong as the same amount of opium but can be more precisely measured, preventing overdose. Hypodermic needles were invented to inject morphine powder and soon people could buy hypodermic syringes in the Sears catalogue for $2.00. 

Next Bayer pharmaceuticals developed the even stronger heroin and marketed it with its other new drug, aspirin. Some people thought aspirin carried higher risks because it caused bleeding. 

But many doctors and members of the public pushed for restrictions on dangerous drugs. In the early 20th century, governments passed laws making opium and its derivatives only available by prescription and requiring companies to list ingredients on drug labels. Researchers gradually developed effective medicines with fewer serious side effects. Laudanum is still available today but is mainly prescribed to control diarrhea when other medications have failed. 

Why am I interested in old time medicine? It's because my new historical mystery novel, A Killer Whisky, deals with common drugs of the early 1900s. These also included cocaine - great for nasal inflammation - and whisky. During Prohibition doctors were allowed to prescribe liquor to relieve stress, pain, and other physical and mental ailments. Many people took advantage of that legal loophole and enjoyed the medicine's intoxicating side-benefits.  

References:

Halpern, John H., MD and Blistein, David. Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World. New York: Hachette, 2019.

Inglis, Lucy. Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium. London: Macmillan, 2019.

Malleck, Dan. When Good Drugs Go Bad. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015.

Novels Make Great Historical Research

 

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My favourite research for my novel-in-progress set in 1918 Calgary has been reading novels written by contemporary authors of the time. This week I finished Rilla of Ingleside, the eighth and last book of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series. When I was a child, I devoured all the Anne books. I loved the first three novels in the series best, but once Anne realized Gilbert was her true love she got boring and the stories shifted focus to her six children. The story of Rilla, the youngest, grabbed me more than those of her older siblings because Rilla grows as a character and the war's impact was poignant. 

Rilla of Ingleside is set during World War One. The novel begins with the war's start in 1914 and ends shortly after the Armistice of November 11, 1918. Wikipedia calls Rilla of Ingleside "the only Canadian novel written from a contemporary woman's perspective about the First World War." I found it an excellent portrait of the experiences, views, and feelings of people living on the Canadian home front. The book led me to make a few changes to my novel, A Killer Whisky, which takes place during the Great War's final month.  

Rilla lived in Prince Edward Island. A friend loaned me four novels written by early twentieth century Alberta writers. As their titles suggest, Cattle by Winnifred Eaton and The Cow Puncher by Robert J.C. Stead are largely set in ranch country, but the characters venture into Calgary. The Cow Puncher gets into World War One, which ties to its theme that meaning comes from service rather than selfishness. Cattle deals with the 1918 Influenza Pandemic aka the Spanish flu, which features prominently in A Killer Whisky.

The Shadow Riders by Isabel Paterson is set entirely in Calgary during the pre-war real estate boom. While reading all of the books, I kept a pen and sheet of paper handy to jot notes on descriptions of Calgary during that era, details of daily life, and word usage. A hundred years ago, expressions of surprise and horror tended to come from religion, such as "Lord Almighty!" "I'll be damned!" and the softer "Heavens!" Peppering a novel with these as well as slightly archaic phrases -- "he was wont to say," "it's a mortal disgrace," "wicked to do this" -- helps bring readers into that former time. 

The fourth Alberta novel I read, The Magpie's Nest, was Isabel Paterson's second published novel. Set partly in rural Alberta and New York City, it provided less Calgary detail than The Shadow Riders, but The Magpie offered some interesting commentary. Today's writers tired of the pressure to promote themselves on social media might appreciate this Magpie character's view of fan worship: “What does anyone want to meet an author for? Or a painter, or any famous person? You’ve got all the best of them in whatever they create. I’d as soon meet a cook because I liked the meal.”

In addition to their practical value for research, I found these five novels jolly good reads. The female characters are remarkably spirited and smart. While the books' styles are somewhat dated, I enjoyed them more than many modern novels I've read. There's good reason to call them classics, but they all aren't easy to get your hands on.  

Rilla of Ingleside is the only one available for takeout from my Calgary Public Library due to the continued popularity of the Anne of Green Gables series. Cattle, re-released last year by Invisible Publishing to mark the 30th anniversary of Winnifred Eaton's death, is available only for in-library use. You aren't likely to find Cattle on a bookstore shelf, but it can be ordered or purchased online. The Leopold Classical Library has republished Isabel Paterson's two novels by scanning the originals since books published in the United States before 1929 are now in the public domain. You can also read e-book versions free online.      

I liked The Shadow Riders so much that I bought the republished paperback and was surprised -- "Good Heavens!" -- when it arrived in 8 1/2 x 11 format in large font with wide margins. A bargain for $30, even though the original novel probably cost about 50 cents in 1918.