Fifth-year history and law student Jo Welson has almost completed a summer research project trawling the National Library's "Papers Past" website for references to chlorodyne, a medicine sold without restrictions in New Zealand and many other parts of the world during the latter half of the 19th century and into the 20th century.
It was marketed as a sedative and a cure for everything from flu to cancer.
Its mix of chloroform, morphine, extract of cannabis and other ingredients, including treacle to make it palatable, meant it was probably safe when taken within the recommended dosage of 10-30 drops up to four times a day, but it was highly addictive.
"Papers Past" is a free resource of more than one million pages of digitised articles and images from 52 New Zealand newspapers and periodicals covering the years 1839 to 1932.
The Otago Daily Times is not among them, although the Otago Witness is.
Articles have only been available for the past two years, and Ms Welson's supervisor, University of Otago head of history Prof Barbara Brookes, said the website made it much quicker and easier for researchers to find out about New Zealand's past.
Ms Welson uncovered 198 articles, most relating to suicides, deaths and court appearances caused by people's hopeless addiction to chlorodyne.
There were also thousands of advertisements for the three different brands of chlorodyne, which were all manufactured in England and imported.
Many of the articles were tragic, Ms Welson said.
Babies died because their addicted mothers breast-fed them or gave them chlorodyne to make them sleep.
Desperate people went into chemists' shops and drank entire bottles of the stuff on the spot before buying more to take home with them.
One article talked about a doctor's wife, dubbed a "chlorodynomaniac", who would pawn anything to get money for the drug.
In 1895, the North Otago Times reported a well-known drunk had gone into a chemist's shop and asked for chlorodyne so he could kill himself.
The chemist, instead, gave him a phial of a liquid designed to make people vomit.
In 1896, the Evening Post reported two skeletons, one male and the other female, had been found in a park surrounded by several phials of chlorodyne.
The note found with them read: "Who we are it matters not; suffice it to say we are tired of the world . . ."
In Sumner, a woman who told the authorities she had 19 children, was homeless and lived and died in a cave because of her addiction.
Ms Welson said one of the most poignant discoveries was a suicide note printed in the Wanganui Chronicle in 1895 which said simply: "I'm off.
Ta ta".
Prof Brookes said her interest in chlorodyne stemmed from her research into life in South Dunedin between 1890 and 1939.
During that research, she learnt about Thomas Gallaway, who was charged with his wife Emmeline's murder after she was hit over the head with a weapon.
He was eventually found not guilty by a jury on the grounds he was a good man who had been driven to extremes because of his wife's addiction to chlorodyne.
She was consuming two 6oz bottles a week and the cost, 6 or more a month, was driving the family into debt.
When police inspected the property, they found more than 200 empty bottles of chlorodyne and many more buried in the yard.
Britain regulated the amount of opiates in chlorodyne in the 1920s and the drug quickly fell out of favour.
Prof Brookes said she and Ms Welson would write an article about the discoveriesfor an international journal.
