"Recognize how easily 'medicine' becomes addiction In Georgian Britain, opium-based laudanum was sold openly at apothecary shops and stocked in domestic medicine chests alongside castor oil and peppermint — treated as an everyday painkiller for headaches, epilepsy, and even flatulence. Curator Dr. Shona Martin explains the ease of access: "You would go along to the apothecary shop and ask them to refill it" — no prescription, no limit. The historical lesson is that substances normalized as beneficial and widely available can quietly become the engine of mass addiction; whenever something is framed purely as a remedy without acknowledging its dependency risk, that framing itself becomes dangerous. Source: Dr. Shona Martin, History Hit, Georgian Vice: Gin, Opium & Snuff"