Editing Opium (section)

==== England ====
In England, opium fulfilled a "critical" role, as it did other societies, in addressing multifactorial [[pain]], [[cough]], [[dysentery]], [[diarrhea]], as argued by [[Virginia Berridge]].<ref name=Dikotter>{{Cite book|last=Dikotter|first=Frank|title=Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China|publisher=Hurst|year=2004|isbn=978-0-226-14905-9|page=3}}</ref> A medical panacea of the 19th century, "any respectable person" could purchase a range of hashish pastes and (later) morphine with complementary injection kit.<ref name=Dikotter/>

[[Thomas De Quincey]]'s ''[[Confessions of an English Opium-Eater]]'' (1822), one of the first and most famous [[Opium and Romanticism|literary accounts of opium addiction]] written from the point of view of an addict, details the pleasures and dangers of the drug. In the book, it is not Ottoman, nor Chinese, addicts about whom he writes, but English opium users: "I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater|last=de Quincey|first=Thomas|year=1821|page=188|title-link=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater}}</ref> De Quincey writes about the great English Romantic poet [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] (1772–1834), whose "[[Kubla Khan]]" is also widely considered to be a poem of the opium experience. Coleridge began using opium in 1791 after developing [[jaundice]] and [[rheumatic fever]], and became a full addict after a severe attack of the disease in 1801, requiring 80–100 drops of [[laudanum]] daily.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Hubble D|date=October 1957|title=Opium Addiction and English Literature|journal=[[Medical History (journal)|Medical History]]|volume=1|issue=4|pages=323–35|doi=10.1017/s0025727300021505|pmc=1034310|pmid=13476921}}</ref>