School project...strange question.

[Rosie Cotton]

Okay, for a school project, I'm writing in an extra scene of "A Tale of Two Cities." Don't worry, no one dies, no one is brought back to life, and no totally bizarre, non-canonical romances are revealed. The scene actually is when Charles Darnay wakes up from his drug-enduced stupor. (I've always wanted to do this! Ever since reading "A Tale of Two Cities"!)

But, what drug did Carton use to cause Darnay to pass out? I asked a teacher I have who knows everything (and trusts me not to be a druggie), and he said that it was probably some opiate, and that laudanum was a definite possibility.

I'm going to say it was laudanum just for the sake of the project, unless someone else has an idea. What drug?

[Grongle]

"It was the best of drugs, and the worst of drugs . . . ." Mm, you're likely pretty close to the mark. I'm not sure what you might be able to dig out of Sherlock Holmes if you search it. Sherlock had some elementary little dependency problems.

Fairly serious drugs were common enough. But keep in mind that your chapter is supposed to be a "chameleon" chapter. Resist the urge to write it reflecting your own interests and styles. Pretend you are being paid as a ghost writer, so your chapter fits in seamlessly. That means you should keep most of your research about the most likely drug to yourself, for future references.

If you find it goes against the grain to fit your chapter in so invisibly, write something else at the same time which is absolutely you. That way you can express yourself as freely as you wish in the second piece of writing, so the first one doesn't seem stifling. Chances are you'll enjoy the "secrecy" of the main assignment very much, though—it sounds like you're a keen writer.

If you are interested in the subject of drugs and their cultural implications in times gone by, you might want to read back into the history of English naval aggression in China, which was all about drugs. That entire chapter was denied us in school, because it is not a very good read for jolly old England.

[Rosie Cotton]

No, I'm not going to say what drug it was, but I might want to know if it would cause side-effects, if so, what, and when he'd wake up.

[Grongle]

Well, one side effect of laudanum was that it could kill a person, if it were taken in very big quantities. But I think most opiates could. It contains morphine, and so you might guess that its main side effect, if taken misguidedly, would be whether he would wake up.

Wikipedia, as usual, is a good reference. It discusses laudanum here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum

Meantime I'll see if I can find anything more specific to A Tale of Two Cities. If I come across anything that answers your question, I'll let you know. I doubt that I shall, though. Things were so much less regulated then, that poisons, drugs, and acids were as available as there was need. A person might acquire what he could, and it might or might not serve its purpose; I think there was a much greater element of chance in the ways people lived. Therefore a writer might take less interest in explaining exactly how a specific event took place.

Keep in mind, as well, that realism was not required. As I've said elsewhere, realism in fiction is merely a style or a fashion. It is neither the right nor the wrong style. It is arbitrary. So there would be less interest then in specifying such a detail—just as we might not care whether someone travelled in a 747 or an Airbus.