Victorian Drug USe
People like to think of drug abuse as a modern issue but the truth is at goes as far as the Victorian era and beyond that as shown in Dr Andrzej, D. Litt, and contributing editor Poland’s article “Victorian Drug Use”. “Today it is hard to believe, but in early- and mid-Victorian Britain it was possible to walk into a chemist's shop and buy without prescription laudanum, cocaine, and even arsenic. Opium preparations were also sold freely in towns on market halls and in the countryside by travelling hawkers.” For a very long time till about 1868 drug sales were almost entirely unrestricted and were being shipped from every corner of Great Britain’s expanding territories. Opium sales were particularly high and were “popular particularly with pre-Victorian and Victorian artists and writers.” During the Victorian Era drugs were used for both medicinal and recreational purposes and recreational use “was not regarded as addiction but rather as a habit”. Drug use was a far more accepted practice in the Victorian Era than it is today and it has been speculated that even the queen herself may have been prescribed drugs by her physician for what was thought to be an effective treatment at the time. People believed that drugs such as cocaine and opium were actually beneficial to your health and were prescribed to treat ailments from “indigestion, melancholia, neurasthenia, cough, diarrhea, rheumatism, 'women's troubles', cardiac disease, and even delirium tremens.” Certain opium derivatives were used as a cure all and were prescribed for almost any ailment and were supposed to even help treat some of the symptoms of pregnancy. This drug use would have lasting effects on their children.
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History of Patent Medicine
In the article “History of Patent Medicine” written by Hagley Museum and Library it shows how drug use was rampant during the 18th and 19th century but many times the people that were taking these drugs were unaware. “Patent medicines originally referred to medications whose ingredients had been granted government protection for exclusivity.” During the 19th century though patent medicines were generally not actually patented and competitors used ingredients that were very similar to each other with “vegetable extracts laced with ample doses of alcohol.” Because there were no regulations on the ingredients used in these medicines and the producers were only really interested in making a profit instead of helping people drugs like opium were often put in them and could be deadly. Since the contents of the medicine were often kept secret there was no way of being sure pf what you were taking. “Remedies were available for almost any ailment. These remedies were openly sold to the public and claimed to cure or prevent nearly every ailment known to man, including venereal diseases, tuberculosis, colic in infants, indigestion or dyspepsia, and even cancer.” Most of the time the medicines that made claims such as these really did no such thing and only made them feel better as the drugs affected their body but never actually helped cure their disease. “with strong support from President Theodore Roosevelt, a Pure Food and Drug Act was passed by Congress in 1906, paving the way for public health action against unlabeled or unsafe ingredients, misleading advertising, the practice of quackery, and similar rackets.” This led to a legitimized medical industry and saved countless lives from medicines with false advertisements that were more likely to kill you than help you.
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