laudanum: [16] Laudanum, the name of a tincture of opium, a forerunner of modern heroin and crack, was coined by the 16th-century Swiss physician Paracelsus. He used it for a medicine of his own devising which according to the prescription he gave out contained all sorts of expensive ingredients such as gold leaf and pearls. It was generally believed, however, that the reason for the medicine’s effectiveness was a generous measure of opium in the mixture, and so in due course laudanum came to have its current use.
It is not known where Paracelsus got the name from, but he could well have based it on Latin lādanum ‘resin’, which came from Greek ládanon, a derivative of ledon ‘mastic’.
