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To ease his pain, he may have used laudanum, an opium drug.

Meanwhile, dissolving opium in alcohol to make laudanum, the method of ingestion preferred by Victorian ladies, was still permitted.

He had been an anesthetic, a way to numb the pain of my father’s death as well as any laudanum.

Upon arrival on the New York side, he was carried to the nearby home of James Bayard, a longtime friend and political disciple, where Hosack administered liberal doses of laudanum and waited for the end.

The effects of the laudanum felt to Ophie like something almost magical: the old woman became not just agreeable, but friendly, her demeanor and her words soft whenever Ophie had to fetch her anything.