Overdose and death may occur with a single oral dose of between 100 and 150 mg of morphine in a healthy adult who has no tolerance to opiates. This represents the equivalent of between two to three teaspoons (10–15 mL) of opium tincture. Suicide by laudanum was common in the mid-19th century. Prudent medical judgment necessitates toward dispensing very small quantities of opium tincture in small dropper bottles or in pre-filled syringes to reduce the risk of intentional or accidental overdose. Danger of confusion with paregoric
In the United States, opium tincture contains 10 mg per mL of anhydrous morphine. By contrast, opium tinctures weaker cousin, paregoric, also confusingly known as "camphorated tincture of opium", is 1/25th the strength of opium tincture, containing only 0.4 mg of morphine per mL. A 25-fold morphine overdose may occur if opium tincture is used where paregoric is indicated. Opium tincture is almost always dosed in drops, or fractions of a mL, or less commonly, in minims, while paregoric is dosed in teaspoons or tablespoons. Thus, an order for opium tincture containing directions in teaspoons is almost certainly in error.
Earlier in the novel, in Chapter 3, it is specified that she uses laudanum.... if Molly should take a drop too much laudanum some day, and make a widower of you. Wilkie Collins novel The Moonstone (1868) features laudanum "as an essential ingredient of the plot." Collins based his description of the drugs effects on his own experiences with it. A laudanum-addicted character also appeared in Wilkie Collins novel Armadale (1864–66). Laudanum appears in Charles Baudelaires prose poem The Double Room, published in his collection Le Spleen de Paris in 1869. Laudanum is portrayed as the surgical drug of choice for fifteenth-century physicians in Lawrence Schoonovers novel The Burnished Blade (1948), the plot of which deals in part with the smuggling of expensive raw opium into France from the Empire of Trebizond. In William Faulkners novel Requiem for a Nun (1951), Compson, Doctor Peabody, and Ratcliffe give whiskey tainted with laudanum to a group of rowdy lynchers and a militia band that had joined together. Upon their falling asleep, they were gathered up and locked in jail while still unconscious. Stephen Maturin, one of the main characters in Patrick OBrians Aubrey–Maturin series of novels (1969–2004) about the Napoleonic wars, is a sometime laudanum addict. Laudanum is prescribed in Glendon Swarthouts novel The Shootist (1975) to the character J.B. Books, played by John Wayne in Don Siegels movie adaptation (1976).