Laudanum example, the wife of the US president Abraham Lincoln, was a laudanum addict, as was the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was famously interrupted in the middle of an opium-induced writing session of "Kubla Khan" by a "person from Porlock". Initially a working class drug, laudanum was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage. Laudanum was used in home remedies and prescriptions, as well as a single medication. For example, a 1901 medical book published for home health use gave the
Crude drug Crude drug Crude drugs are vegetable or animal drugs that contain natural substances that have undergone only the processes of collection and drying. The term natural substances refers to those substances found in nature that have not had man-made changes made in their molecular structure. They are used as medicine for human being and animal, internally and externally for curing disease, e.g., Senna and Cinchona. A crude drug is any naturally occurring, unrefined substance derived from organic or inorganic sources such as plant, animal, bacteria, organs or whole organisms intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention