Friday, December 2, 2011
Opium-soaked tampons are the thing your great-great-grandparents hid from you.
Posted by Missy Wilkinson on Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 1:59 PM
All right, kids, think you're hard core with your vodka-soaked tampons and your butt-chugging? Turns out your great-great-great-grandparents were the original gangsters. Three words: opium-soaked tampons.
"In the 19th century, tampons were soaked in opium and belladonna," says Liz Sherman, executive director of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, where a box of antique opium-soaked tampons is on display. "The opium was to relieve pain, and the belladonna was to dilate and relax the vagina."
Sherman says the majority of opium users were middle- to upper-class women. While it wasn't socially acceptable for women to patronize saloons, there was nothing wrong with slipping in an opium-soaked tampon or sipping a morphine-laced tonic from the comfort of one's own parlor. "There were a lot of tonics geared toward women's ailments, and most were 25 percent or more alcohol and had some sort of opiate in them," Sherman says.
Aside from being a way more intense high, there's another difference between opium-soaked tampons and their contemporary, alcoholic counterparts: "(Nineteenth-century women) weren’t soaking tampons in opium specifically to get high, there were medicinal reasons for it," Sherman says. "There were also a good percentage of people who strictly used (opium) recreationally, but medicinally, the majority were women. Or at least under the guise of medicinal use."
- Don't worry, it's nothing an opium-soaked tampon won't fix.
like
dislike
Recent Comments
-
Re: Times-Picayune employees in shock as extent of Newhouse cuts begins to emerge
Thanks, xz969. Story appended with link.
- on May 24, 2012
-
Re: Times-Picayune employees in shock as extent of Newhouse cuts begins to emerge
The eight-part series on Louisiana prisons is here: http://www.nola.com/prisons/
I found it by searching…- on May 24, 2012
-
Re: Times-Picayune employees in shock as extent of Newhouse cuts begins to emerge
Markets can seem harsh sometimes
-
on May 24, 2012
via mobile
-
Re: Times-Picayune employees in shock as extent of Newhouse cuts begins to emerge
Horrendous-- beyond the job losses, this is a terrible blow to our city as well…
- on May 24, 2012
-
Re: OMG: Justin Bieber is coming to New Orleans
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG......... puke
- on May 23, 2012
-
Re: Who would make the best big screen Ignatius J. Reilly?
Ah and reading down, I see Kevin is already there. Anyway let's try and not…
- on May 23, 2012
- More »
