Laudanum from AIDS and cancer. Deodorized Tincture of Opium (DTO) is sometimes also erroneously employed to abbreviate ""diluted" tincture of opium", a 1:25 mixture of opium tincture to water prescribed to treat withdrawal symptoms in newborns whose mothers were using opioids while pregnant. The United States Pharmacopeia and FDA recommend that practitioners refrain from using DTO in prescriptions, given this potential for confusion. In cases where pharmacists have misinterpreted DTO, and received "deodorized tincture of opium" when "diluted tincture of opium" was meant, infants have received a massive 25-fold overdose of morphine, sometimes resulting in fatalities. Side effects of laudanum are
Laudanum imaginable: mercury, hashish, cayenne pepper, ether, chloroform, belladonna, whiskey, wine and brandy." As one researcher has noted: "To understand the popularity of a medicine that eased -- even if only temporarily -- coughing, diarrhoea and pain, one only has to consider the living conditions at the time". In the 1850s, "cholera and dysentery regularly ripped through communities, its victims often dying from debilitating diarrhoea", and dropsy, consumption, ague and rheumatism were all too common. By the 19th century, laudanum was used in many patent medicines to "relieve pain ... to produce sleep ... to allay irritation ... to check excessive