dysentery and diarrhea are also symptoms of other sorts of illnesses cholera, yellow fever. it slows down the actions of the bowels, it relieves diarrhea and makes you feel better. the big danger with diarrhea is that you get dehydrated which your kidneys can then shut down. so laudanum or opium to treat chronic dysentery or diarrhea was a very useful medical tool. and then obviously as a sedative and for anxiety and symptoms of that kind. another form of opium dissolved in alcohol was called paregoric. this is camphorated tincture of opium. it's much weaker than laudinum, there's not as much opium in it. the camphor gave it an expectorant, it would break up congestion in your chest, it was often used for respiratory illness, as a cough syrup, that kind of thing. it could also be used for some of these other complaints as well. you just had to take more of it. and you could also just eat the opium once it was prepared and it would take the same kind of effect. later developments in opiate products, morphine, which is an alkaloid of opium, more potent than simply eating opium

there was no way to address them other than to address the symptoms, which might be pain, dysentery, all sorlts of things which laudanum and morphine genuinely could help with. >> it also addresses why it was so common to use. during the civil war and early revolution they knew it worked for pain and that it would less ep shock and allow a soldier to recover -- recover or deal with horrific waundz on amputations and that's why it was so widely prescribed. so there you have an instance of we know it works for pain. then it snowballs from there. >> chris? >> they had quite a bit on hand and would use it for various things. there's an excerpt from the revolutionary war where the guy says it's a terrible thing too much but you needed it at times, too. if the physician doesn't have it on the battlefield it will be rendered useless. i know in the civil war they talked about on page 54 how much opium and morphine were taken in this last paragraph and spoke to the decline because by the turn of the 20th century, veterans were dying off. is that where they see the turn? after the civil war, t

came down but dysentery in egypt and. he said, well, it will take more than an iceberg to give me of my bed here. that was the last that was heard it was an hour after the first sighting before the first coke was lowered. .. that they sold the sloping deck, people on lifeboats and how serious this was. before long they began firing rockets as the ship was down command of course they get seen only one thing and people said they wouldn't be firing rockets if it wasn't serious but then they hear the band playing, listen to the orchestra playing and the tunes were drifting across the deck, so it didn't seem all that serious. as you know there was a ship nearby. it had shot down an ice and the men on watch tried to board the titanic and had been told to keep out and shut out a city gone to bed. the captain was told that they were firing of the white flares and said the signal it's a very long story i won't get into all but be that as it may they never came to the rescue and there may have been more, there may have been as many