Laudanum

Laudanum is an opium tincture whose role shifts between emergency relief and prescribed treatment. In the novel, a jar carried by Joseph Pritchard becomes part of the effort to bring the injured Emery Staines back to Hokitika; later, measured doses are administered to both Staines and Anna Wetherell while they are held in custody. The drug thus connects medical care to addiction, confinement, and uncertainty about how Anna obtained the opium involved in her collapse.

Supply and suspicion

Pritchard is a chemist and, south of the Grey River, the sole supplier of opium to the West Coast dens. After hearing second-hand that Anna had nearly died from an overdose, he is frustrated that she did not seek his advice. He doubts she intended to kill herself and considers two possibilities: that she was made to take the drug, or that the substance was altered to harm her. He asks to examine the remaining lump from the Chinese den for poison, but Ah Sook refuses. The refusal does not end Pritchard’s professional interest; he wants to question Anna himself.

Pritchard’s suspicions are not proof that laudanum caused Anna’s earlier overdose. The account establishes that she had taken a great deal of opium and had remained unconscious for more than twelve hours, an unusually prolonged loss of consciousness for someone accustomed to the drug. Pritchard considers whether she was drugged, whether the substance was adulterated, or whether she was concealing the truth to protect someone. His inquiry makes the source and effect of opium a matter of investigation, but leaves the explanation unresolved.

A jar carried to Staines

When Te Rau Tauwhare reaches Pritchard’s Drug Hall, Pritchard soon sets out with him in a rented trap, carrying a glass jar of laudanum in his pocket. They travel north to find Staines, who is wounded and in need of help. Pritchard is pleased that Staines had asked for him specifically rather than for a doctor. At the cottage, Pritchard gives him the tincture to ease his distress and helps carry him out with Tauwhare.

The drug’s place in this rescue is practical and immediate: Pritchard uses it while Staines is being transported back. He supports Staines as he drinks from the jar, then encourages him to rest. This episode also foreshadows a different, more routine use of laudanum: the same substance will be brought regularly to the place where both Anna and Staines are detained.

Anna’s collapse and the missing source

Later, Anna falls sideways at the courthouse. George Shepard says he can smell laudanum, while Aubert Gascoigne examines her mouth and notes that her tongue and teeth show no staining. Shepard orders that she be taken to the gaol-house. The signs observed by the men do not establish where Anna obtained the drug or what she took.

In the Police Camp gaol-house, Cowell Devlin wonders whether Anna went to Pritchard’s Drug Hall after he escorted her to court and bought a phial. Gascoigne tells him that Pritchard’s is closed and has been all afternoon. Devlin’s question therefore remains open: Anna is found in a state that prompts suspicion of laudanum use, but the chemist’s closed premises do not explain her access to it. The uncertainty echoes Pritchard’s earlier effort to determine whether an overdose arose from deliberate action, another person’s intervention, or an undisclosed circumstance.

Prescribed doses under supervision

After Anna and Staines reunite, both remain incarcerated. Anna cannot meet her eight-pound bail, and Staines, held on separate charges, chooses to stay rather than pay his own one-pound-one-shilling bail. During this period, Dr. Gillies prescribes Anna a decreasing dosage of laudanum to wean her from opium. He also prescribes Staines five drams daily for his shoulder, with the amount to fall by one dram every fortnight until the wound has healed.

The two prescriptions are not identical in stated purpose: Anna’s is a gradual withdrawal plan, while Staines’s is linked to the recovery of his shoulder. Yet they receive their doses together. Devlin brings the jar to the Police Camp gaol-house each night, measures the tincture into two tin cups, and supervises them as they drink. He mixes it with sugar, and sometimes sweet sherry, to reduce its bitterness. Anna dislikes the daily dose, whereas Staines develops a strong thirst for it; within minutes, both grow drowsy and sleep.

Treatment, dependence, and confinement

Laudanum’s repeated appearances complicate any simple division between medicine and intoxicant. Pritchard first carries it as relief for Staines, while the later regimen places its use under a physician’s instructions and Devlin’s supervision. Anna’s declining dose is intended to reduce her dependence, but she remains in custody and has no control over the conditions under which the medicine is given. Staines, by contrast, is prescribed the tincture for his injury and appears to welcome it more strongly than Anna does.

The drug also binds separate uncertainties into a single object: Pritchard’s unanswered questions about Anna’s earlier overdose, the unexplained source of the phial suspected after her courthouse collapse, and the paired nightly doses given to two prisoners. Rather than resolving those questions, laudanum marks how bodily need, medical authority, and legal confinement overlap in the characters’ lives.