“It’s almost as if someone had handed them a magic wand.”īy 1895, morphine and opium powders, like Ox圜ontin and other prescription opioids today, had led to an addiction epidemic that affected roughly 1 in 200 Americans. Courtwright, author of Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America.

“Doctors were really impressed by the speedy results they got,” says David T. Injected with a hypodermic syringe, the medication relieved pain, asthma, headaches, alcoholics’ delirium tremens, gastrointestinal diseases and menstrual cramps. Physicians like Schuppert used morphine as a new-fangled wonder drug. “This acted like a charm, as he came to in a minute from the stupor he was in and rested very easily.” “I gave him an injection of morphine subcutaneously of ½ grain,” Schuppert wrote in his casebook. It was the late 1870s, and Schuppert, like thousands of American doctors of his era, turned to the most effective drug in his kit.

Charles Schuppert, a New Orleans surgeon, was summoned to help. The man was bleeding, wounded in a bar fight, half-conscious.

Morphine antidote