marianne wrote:
>> I believe laudanum
>>contained opium, not cocaine.
>You're right, both of you. Well, I expect that
it was Prince Albert who
>took the cocaine. <g>
>
>MM
To kill the pain of his famous/legendary/mythical? piercing?
I have heard, anecdotally, that Queen Vic liked a bit of
(totally legal) charlie, and took it by the teaspoon for
period pains. There was a recent UK book about Victorians
which debunks their image as joyless,
board-up-the-stuffed-shirt moralists and recasts them as
having a very 'healthy' attitude to sex, drugs and pleasure
generally. Not read it and just now can't remember the title
but I'm sure a search on amazon would find it. There was also
a recent history of drug culture, and a lot of my (fairly
limited) information on it comes from the excellent - Waiting
for the Man, a history of drugs and popular music - which has
a potted history of each pharmaceutical before outlining its
effects on various musicians and music scenes. Jess has
mentioned some hardboiled fictional Victorian detectives - I
would love to read some, all I have read are Holmes and Edgar
Allan Poe. Could you provide details please Jess? Are they
easily available? All the best. Colin.
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