"In the Arms of Morpheus tells the shocking story of how a simple but bewitching substance touted as a miracle drug enslaved unwitting generations of nineteenth-century writers, artists and ordinary citizens. Extracted from opium, the sap of the poppy, this popular drug was welcomed into the homes of rich and poor alike for medical use in the form of laudanum, pure, undisguised morphine and patent medicines.

Well-known writers and poets who used laudanum - a potent mixture of wine, opium, saffron and cinnamon - included, among many others, Wilkie Collins, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, most famously, Thomas De Quincey, who took so much of the stuff that, he said, "I might as well have bathed and swum in it." After the alkaloid morphine was isolated from opium, around 1805, morphine use became astonishingly common; men and women of all economic levels began injecting the substance, and theatre-going matrons carried their syringes with them in elegant vials and cigarette cases. By the late nineteenth century, medical opium was cheaply and readily available in the form of patent medicines, which appealed to those at the bottom of the social heap. Among the most popular of these formulations were the soothing syrups that mothers lovingly administered to their infants. In the early twentieth century, however, governments, concerned about the widespread use of opium, drastically tightened the controls on this once universally available drug.

Thoroughly researched and lavishly illustrated with photographs, engravings, advertisements, movie stills and covers from pulp magazines and dime novels, In the Arms of Morpheus provides an eye-opening account of medical opium that is fascinating and uncomfortably close to home."