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Tea, tobacco and drugs
Andrew Stepanenko
May 19, 2019 #^https://scan1707.blogspot.com/2019/05/blog-post.html
Translated by Berenkova Violetta Michailovna

THE DRUG-DEALING APPROVAL IN THE PAST
Below numerous antinarcotic data are presented, however, it is necessary to understand that it is only one side of the coin, and secondary at that.
The group of alkaloids includes a lot of curatives - from coca, opium, hashish and even from tobacco. We are inclined to be angry, when we see adverts of the 19 century with opium infusions against cough for children, however, some opiates really treat cough and not only cough.
Without anesthesia, surgical intervention may cause a patient’s shock and death. In the past, the overwhelming majority of death cases after wounds happened due to shock, and opium used to be the only anesthetic known in Europe up to the middle of the 19 century.
All antidotes contained theriac – opium wine tincture, and it was the right decision: at least, it had a placebo effect: to the patient felt better, and the person started to believe that he would recover. Nevertheless, there is also one more circumstance: speaking about medieval poisoning cases, we already see a picture in our heads: a malicious sorcerer pours toxin in soup, and this picture is doubtful. Up to 1880s there were no effective toxins, and almost all poisoning cases, in which doctors prescribed alkaloids, had not criminal character. Moreover, they happened really often.
Primarily, the author means poisoning with telluric gases and volcanic products as the result of earthquakes during those epoch when Europe was covered, for example, with clouds of ashes drifting from Iceland. People died not only because of chemical burns (lungs, first of all) and lesions of basal ganglia; the most different areas of the nervous system suffered, and in such situations to do without some alkaloids meant to increase the cases of lethal outcomes in tens percent in a short period of time.
The theme of dangerous natural disasters requires separate large research, but now it is necessary to assume the fact that the mass confidence of our ancestors that smoking or even narcotic “a feast in time of plague” helped to survive had been found to be substantiated.

Formal responsibility of doctors, chemists and the authorities for narcotism began not earlier than 1880s, when for the first time there appeared understanding with what they, actually, dealt. The beginning of actual responsibility is more reasonable to be related to 1909 – the year when the Shanghai opium commission took up responsibility for all volume of the consequences for the first time.
Everything that was earlier, is history - such as it is.

INCENSE AND LABDANUM
Words are extremely similar, and in 2011 the basic definitions looked as so:
Incense - dried juice of plants of Boswellia sort … selected incense - Olibanum electum and ordinary incense - Olibanum in sortis.
Labdanum (Ladanum, Laudanum, Ledanum, Ladbdanum, La ` danon, Lh ` danon, Lh^don) is tincture, laudanum infusion in alcohol (1).

That is, incense in Latin is Olibanum, and opium - Ladanum.
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