The Rise and Fall of Laudanum: The Drug That Built The Gilded Age (late 1870s - late 1890s)

You Tube ^ | 17 DEC 2025 | After Hours History Channel

[Texan4Life]

This is the untold story of America's first opioid crisis—and how Purdue Pharma copied the exact same playbook 120 years later. The corporate tactics, the targeting of women, the media manipulation, the blocked regulations. Every strategy that created the modern opioid epidemic was perfected in the Gilded Age, which was the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era.

CHAPTERS: 0:00 - The Drug You Could Buy Next to Flour 4:08 - Part One: God's Own Medicine 9:44 - Part Two: The Soldier's Disease 15:12 - Part Three: The Hidden Epidemic 23:38 - Part Four: The Empire of Fraud 31:08 - Part Five: The Red Clause Conspiracy 35:05 - Part Six: The Politics of Who Matters 38:56 - Part Seven: The Opium Eaters 47:14 - Part Eight: The Great American Fraud 55:39 - Part Nine: The Beginning of the End 1:07:43 - Part Ten: The Monument 1:12:30 - Conclusion: The Lesson We Keep Forgetting

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TOPICS: Health/Medicine; History; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: drug; gildedage; godsgravesglyphs; laudanum; opium

[Texan4Life]

A sobering History about the after effects of war, and about the politics of "medicine."

[Tell It Right]

Thanks for posting

[SunkenCiv]

Chloral hydrate is another drug from that period. It was used recreationally by the PRB painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A drink mixing chloral hydrate with whiskey to mask the taste was known as 'Mickey Finn'.

[wardaddy]

If any of yall have any freepmail please lol

[kawhill]

“Laudanum was a 10 percent solution of opium powder in alcohol, widely used to treat everything from pain and insomnia to female disorders. It was even used to quiet crying babies.” Could a person buy some now?

[Jeff Vader]

My Mum told of how her father kept a bottle of it in the house for emergencies, this was 1940s Britain

[algore]

” Could a person buy some now?”

Sure, just depends on who you know

[algore]

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article32158749.html

[x]

Chloral is what Lily Bart was taking in “The House of Mirth.”

She came to a bad end.

[Bob434]

it’s just straight ‘tincture of opium’ now

[SisterK]

very interesting

the Cheney family acquired money and power by trading in opium

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

:: Could a person buy some now? ::

At one time, Imodium A-D was Class II OTC (ID & signature).
That contained Opium.
Not certain of today’s version.

[Zathras]

I had never heard of it until I watched “The Shootist” with John Wayne.
Just before his death from lung cancer.

[Texan4Life]

In the movie “Tombstone.” Wyatt Earp’s woman was addicted to Laudanum.

[AppyPappy]

Easily replicated today but why bother? What would you be looking for?

[Sirius Lee]

Could a person buy some now?

Talk to Ali.

You can't say "no".

[Texan4Life]

The “Good Ol’ Days...”

On June 22, 1918, four people were arrested, and over one hundred waiters were taken into custody over the apparent widespread practice of poisoning by waiters in Chicago.

Guests who tipped poorly were given “Mickey Finn powder” in their food or drinks. Chemical analysis showed that it contained antimony potassium tartrate, also called “emetic tartar”; which in addition to causing vomiting, headaches, dizziness and depression, can be lethal in large quantities. Two bartenders were arrested for selling the powder at the bar at the waiters’ union headquarters, and W. Stuart Wood and his wife were arrested for manufacturing the powder. Wood sold packets of it for 20 cents and referred to it as “Mickey Finn Powder” in a letter to union bartender John Millian. A follow-up article mentions the pursuit of a man named Jean Crones, who was believed to be responsible for poisoning over 100 people at a banquet held at the University Club of Chicago at which three people died.
-Wiki

[SunkenCiv]

The victims sound like a bunch of whiners. In my day, we had to drink down one of those just to get in the schoolhouse. After walking five miles to school. All weather. No shoes. 😊 Thanks T4L.