Godfrey's Cordial

Godfrey's Cordial was a patent medicine, containing laudanum (tincture of opium) in a sweet syrup, which was commonly used as a sedative to quiet infants and children in Victorian England.

[3] Godfrey's cordial contained about 11⁄4 grain of opium per ounce apothecaries' system (~0.26% by mass) and was readily available without prescription in England and North America.

Though many cases of infant death had been conclusively linked to an indiscriminate use of the medicine by mothers and nurses,[1][5][7][12] exact numbers are hard to ascertain.

[3] In 1857, with ill-advised opioid usage reaching alarming levels, a parliamentary bill was put forward which classified opium and its derivatives as poisons.

[3] Usage of Godfrey's Cordial gradually declined post-1890 as several court rulings held that the act applied equally to patent medicines[3] and the British Medical Association subsequently published lists of safe home remedies, in a bid to increase public health awareness, which mentioned calomel and sugar-based derivatives as substitute sedative agents.