8. Tons of People Took Opium Frequently
Opium, which is a refined form of the sap from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, was imported in significant quantities to England from its colony, Bengal. Opiates were common in household medicines in various forms, especially laudanum, and were easy to obtain. The Prince Regent himself was reportedly taking up to 250 drops of laudanum a day towards the end of his life. Laudanum, as used at the time, was a tincture of 10% powdered opium by weight, and the equivalent of a tincture of 1% morphine today. It’s hard to imagine now, but children and even infants were often dosed with laudanum for toothaches or cholic during the era. Doctors and apothecaries, who served as rudimentary pharmacists, had no formalized training and freely advised patients of all ages to take opiates.
Opiates were no less addictive in Regency England than they are today, with countless contemporary reports of lives destroyed and sufferers dying from addiction and overdose. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was famously addicted to opium. While he initially began taking laudanum for childhood fever, it turned into an addiction that led to his using two quarts of laudanum a week by the end of his life. His obsession led to his wife leaving him and his friendship with fellow poet William Wordsworth dissolving.