Description
The fairway mountains, lush valleys and riotous fall colors of idyllic nineteenth-century Vermont masked a sinister underbelly. By 1900, the state used to be within the throes of a widespread opium epidemic that saw more than 3.3 million doses of the drug being distributed to inhabitants every month. Decades of infighting inside the medical profession, complicit doctors and druggists, unrestricted get entry to to opium and bogus patent medicines all contributed to the issue. The ones conflicts were compounded by a hands-off legislature all in favour of prohibiting the consumption of alcohol. Historian Gary G. Shattuck traces this abnormal aspect of Vermont’s past.