At the beginning of the nineteenth century, as a result of the expanding British Empire, opium also became available in Britain and soon it was as popular as alcohol. However, the bulk of opium imports to Britain came not from India but from Turkey. “Turkish opium, noted for its strength and high quality, usually provided between 80 and 90% of Britain's total import of the drug, only losing some of its preeminence in the late seventies and eighties when the Persian variety was more widely imported.” (Berridge 438) Opium and opium derivatives were widely recognised in Victorian Britain as a 'cure all' and the range of opiate preparations on the market was enormous.
The most popular opium derivative was laudanum, a tincture of opium mixed with wine or water. Laudanum, called the 'aspirin of the nineteenth century,' was widely used in Victorian households as a painkiller, recommended for a broad range of ailments including cough, diarrhea, rheumatism, 'women's troubles', cardiac disease and even delirium tremens. Many notable Victorians, who used laudanum as a painkiller, included Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Gabriel Dante Rossetti, and his wife Elizabeth Siddal, who died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862. Wilkie Collins used laudanum for the pain of gout and other maladies.
Women made a substantial part of the addicted Victorian population, and were, as a rule, more medicated than men. A number of patent drugs and proprietary medicines containing opium or its derivatives, were called 'women's friends'. Doctors prescribed widely opiates for 'female troubles', associated with menstruation and childbirth, or fashionable 'female maladies', such as the vapours, which included hysteria, depression, fainting fits, and mood swings.
THE LONG TERM EFFECTS:
- The long term effects of opium include many health related problems and may also impact the social well-being, emotional well-being and spiritual well-being of the addict as well. Over time, opium use is likely to lead to opium addiction which requires professional help to overcome.
- Users who smoke opium are at an increased risk of suffering lung disease or lung cancer as well as various other health problems. Smoking opium causes irreparable damage to the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs. The damaging effects of smoking opium will often linger with the user for many years or potentially the rest of his or her life even after the drug is no longer being used. A lack of oxygen to the brain as well as a lack of oxygen to the other vital organs within the body can lead to long term damage.
- Damage to the veins is likely when any drug is injected regularly and there is also the potential for contamination, STDs or the transmission of disease through intravenous drug abuse. Injecting can lead to abscesses of the skin which, when left untreated, can lead to a need for amputation of the limbs.
COCAINE:
In the mid- and late-Victorian period doctors and pharmacists' organisations attempted to formulate a “professional ethic” and called for more stringent control of the sale of opiates and poisons. Constant drug use was regarded as an addiction rather than a moral weakness. Gradually, quinine and chloral replaced opiates as recommended remedies for fever and sleeplessness. Cocaine was also used in a number of patent medicines. From the 1880s to the 1920s coca was even advised by pharmacists for relieving vomiting in pregnancy, and cocaine wool was recommended to relieve toothache.
THE LONG TERM EFFECTS:
- Users take cocaine in "binges," during which the cocaine is used repeatedly and at increasingly higher doses. This can lead to increased irritability, restlessness, panic attacks, and paranoia—even a full-blown psychosis, in which the individual loses touch with reality and experiences auditory hallucinations. With increasing dosages or frequency of use, the risk of adverse psychological or physiological effects increases.
- Regularly snorting cocaine, for example, can lead to loss of sense of smell; nosebleeds; problems with swallowing; hoarseness; and an overall irritation of the nasal septum, which could result in a chronically inflamed, runny nose.
- Ingested cocaine can cause severe bowel gangrene, due to reduced blood flow.
- Persons who inject cocaine have puncture marks called "tracks," most commonly in their forearms, and may experience allergic reactions, either to the drug or to some additive in street cocaine, which in severe cases can result in death. Many chronic cocaine users lose their appetite and experience significant weight loss and malnourishment.
This research and information has really helped me along in my character design and development. I am now gaining much more knowledge around the kind of person Dorian Gray would have been. After long term use of opium and possibly cocaine the way dorian would act would be psychotic. If you pair this with an addictive personality as well as his malicious and immoral acts over the course of roughly 20 years his body, internally and externally, would have been severely damaged and aged. This research is definitely going to help me and inspire my designs. I now intend to practice making some wounds that involve veins and infection rather than just cuts and bruises.
Websites used:
http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/science/addiction/addiction2.html
http://www.opium.org/long-term-effects-of-opium.html
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/cocaine/what-are-long-term-effects-cocaine-use
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