Examines how the drinking of laudanum for medical reasons developed and how it became an everyday safeguard against pain, poverty, and boredom. Opium eating was catapulted into fame by the confessions of Thomas De Quincy and insinuated itself into the lives and works of writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Lord Byron, Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, the Brontës, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and many others. Illustrated with photographs, engravings, advertisements, movie stills, pulp magazine and dime novel covers and paraphernalia.

"Originated and simultaneously published in Canada by Greystone Books, Vancouver"--T.p. verso.

Introduction: In the Arms of Morpheus --1 -- Search for Health: Opium's Role in the Evolution of Medicine -- 17 -- Drink Me: Laudanum and Other Traditional Opium Medicines -- 45 -- Possessed: Morphine -- 79 -- I Like It! I Want It! Patent Medicines from Cradle to Grave -- 103 -- Opiomania: Criminalization Breaks the Poppy's Spell -- 125 -- Appendix Opium at the Movies -- 139.