Was laudanum (or something similar) available in 18th century France? When I have come across references to it, it's usually in the context of the 19th century.

This source said that it had been known in Europe since the sixteenth century:
http://drugs.uta.edu/laudanum.html

In France, it was certainly available but still seemed to be for medical uses, as for this cancer treatment:

Bibliothèque physico-économique, instructive et amusante.
1785 (A4).
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205563h.r=laudanum.f334.langEN

This was for livestock:
1786 (A5)
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205470d.r=laudanum.f172.langEN

A 1792 item says that rich people kept it around to use for wasp stings:

And if they didn't have any, some had poppies in their garden with which to make it (!).
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205479t.r=laudanum.f368.langEN

There's a larger point about drug use here which I've never considered before. In fact, with all the decadent behavior one encounters in the Old Regime, drug use isn't much if at all. Perhaps because alcohol was already so ubiquitous (coffee and tea made it less so as the century went on)?

Even Wolfgang Schivelbusch, in his Tastes of Paradise, which traces pleasures such as caffeine drinks, tobacco, etc. refers to opium as a nineteenth century (and initially working class) phenomenon. But it was also considered perfectly normal initially.

So yes laudanum existed in France in our period, but not in the way it would in England a century later.

I forgot one way opium (though not laudanum, so far as I recall) was used in Old Regime France:


http://www.chezjim.com/sundries/s31.html


http://www.chezjim.com/sundries/s32.html

Thank you again, Jim. for the information! Maybe you should teach a class about 18th century France... (It would be fascinating.)