334 Opium
that opium could produce happiness, although evidence of ancient recrea-
tional use is nonexistent.
The Opium War from 1840 to 1842 was the first drug war, followed by the
second Opium War of 1856 to 1860. These military conflicts were fought
against China by England and other European powers in order to force the
Chinese government to legalize the opium trade (certainly a goal different
from that of the “drug war” familiar to Americans as the twenty-first century
began).
Opium and itsmorphinecomponent were widely used to treat wounded
soldiers in the American Civil War, and later historians have routinely said
that addiction became so common that it was called “the soldier’s disease.”
Such illness may have existed, but an investigator who diligently examined
medical writings from that time found none that attributed postwar addictions
to war-related medical use. In that era the opium trade was legal, and some-
one who analyzed opium import statistics found no evidence that consump-
tion rose due to Civil War addictions; a distinguished authority has noted that
people of that era called dysentery “the soldier’s disease.”
Just before World War I an article in theJournal of the American Medical
Associationdeclared, “If the entire materia medica at our disposal were limited
to the choice and use of only one drug, I am sure that a great many, if not
the majority, of us would choose opium; and I am convinced that if we were
to select, say half a dozen of the most important drugs in the Pharmacopeia,
we should all place opium in the first rank.”^1 Although many useful drugs
have been discovered since then, opium is still the basis for many standard
medications. Because opium is a natural product, its morphine content can
vary greatly from batch to batch. Opium commercially processed for medical
use is adjusted so that 10% of any given amount of medical opium is com-
posed of morphine.
Although medical opinion about opium has changed little, public opinion
has changed a lot. Reasons for that shift go beyond the scope of this book,
but in the nineteenth century, use of opium and its derivatives had wide social
approval in America.Alcoholwas considered more hazardous to health and
home. One of the most telling measures of approval came from the life in-
surance industry in India, which freely granted policies to known opium
users, as mortality statistics showed opium having no effect on life span. A
life insurance official reported similar experience in China, although older
users in China had higher mortality than older nonusers (probably many users
took the drug for diseases that nonusers did not have, with the death rate
related more to those diseases than to opium). Some of those statistics would
change as the twentieth century progressed because drug laws would change
the kinds of people who used opium, thereby associating opium with popu-
lations having higher mortality for reasons unrelated to opium’s drug prop-
erties.
Although identified with China, opium has been grown in the United States.
In the late eighteenth century Benjamin Franklin used laudanum (typically
wine laced with opium) to treat himself for kidney stones. During the nine-
teenth century Americans used opium mainly as an ingredient in laudanum
and paregoric. Paregoric is a liquid including anise, camphor, and opium.