Order Form for Opium, Etc.

This piece of ephemera is typically exhibited alongside the "Horrors of Opium Consumption" display mentioned in an earlier post.

On December 17th, 1914, faced with a nationwide scourge of cocaine and opiates abuse, Congress passes the Harrison Narcotics Act, requiring that any person endeavoring to "produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away" any form of cocaine or opiates register with his district Internal Revenue office, and to pay taxes on any narcotics transactions. A clause of the Act further stipulated that only physicians would be legally capable of prescribing the drugs, and were limited in the situations deemed acceptable for their prescription.

Several laws were passed on National and state levels after the passing of the Harrison Narcotics Act that further regulated the import and distribution of narcotic substances, eventually effecting a marked decrease in the number of individuals addicted to narcotics. The slip of paper above dates from 1917, five years after the passing of the Harrison Narcotics Act, and serves as an official document by which a liscensed physician could procure narcotics from a regulated source.

Here, Doctor W.E. Barron of Addison NY submits his order for 20, 1/4 grain hypodermic tablets of morphine sulphate, often supplied in these tiny glass vials by the likes of Parke Davis and Co. or Burroughs Wellcome:



The order form is quite elegant in it's design; note the lovely bunch of opium poppies that graces the upper left hand corner:



While the H.N.A. did much to loosen opium's grip on our nation, it certainly didn't eradicate the problem of addiction completely. A popular challenge for physicians was to conceive of programs through which addicts could be weaned of their habits: one such program was revealed by London physician G. Laughton Scott in his 1930 publication The Morphine Habit And Its Painless Treatment.





Order Form for Opium , Etc. 1917, accessioned NMHPH c.2005. Paper Ephemera. HM1209.3. Copyrighted image.

The Morphine Habit and Its Painless Treatment. G. Laughton Scott. 1930. London, H.K. Lewis and Co. Ltd. HM1309.3. Copyrighted image.