Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Thomas De Quincey

  • A very Victorian drug

    Anita Cooke New Brunswick, Canada   Elizabeth Siddal Plaiting her Hair by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Tate Gallery London. Date unknown. Photo © Tate. CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0. On February 14, 1862, the Daily News reported the “Death of a Lady from an Overdose of Laudanum.”1 Four nights earlier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti had discovered his wife, Lizzie, in…

  • Thomas De Quincey and Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: Opium as medicine and beyond

    Jared Griffin Pennsauken, New Jersey, United States   If a man “whose talk is of oxen,” should become an Opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all)—he will dream about oxen: whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the Opium-eater boasteth himself to be…