Famed "opium-eaters" such as Thomas DeQuincey were actually consuming laudanum — a mixture of alcohol and opium derivatives. Laudanum was introduced to Western therapeutics by Paracelsus in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, English physician Syndenham recommended its use for relief of pain, sleeplessness and diarrhea. It became an important remedy advocated by Western medical discourses. In the nineteenth century, laudanum was often used to relieve the pain of injured soldiers and was a common item included in the medicine kits of many "proper" Victorian families.

    Because of its easy, inconspicuous consumption, many Victorian writers and artists chose to satisfy their "yens" for opium by taking it in the laudanum form. In this way they could develop a private, discrete habit rather than sharing their vice with strangers at opium dens, where the drug was smoked by passing pipes from one user to another.

     Elizabeth Barrett Browning began swallowing laudanum to treat her childhood spinal tuberculosis and became a lifelong addict, even suffering from a miscarriage due to her abuse of the substance. But the drug also provided a source of poetic inspiration. Letters exchanged between Elizabeth and Robert Browning are filled with images of scarlet poppies, alluding to ElizabethÕs laudanum addiction.

    Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife, lesser-known poet Elizabeth Siddal, died of a laudanum overdose. Other Victorian literary users included novelists Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.