Laudanum

Ever since my recovery from the fever I had been in the custom of taking every night a small quantity of laudanum; for it was by means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of life.

Whatever else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, —of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup.

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.

Laudanum, a derivative of opium, was the name given to a secret remedy concocted by the occultist Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century.

At the time, Wilson writes, England was “marinated in opium, which was taken for everything from upset stomachs to sore heads.” It was swallowed in the form of pills or dissolved in alcohol to make laudanum, the tincture preferred by De Quincey.

In Sydenham’s 1683 treatise on the disease, for the sudden onset of violent symptoms he recommended laudanum — a tincture of opium and alcohol — to take the edge off the pain; […]