A lecture by Keith Wailoo, Professor of History at Princeton University.

As global opium markets expanded in the 19^th century, the drug presented a deep therapeutic dilemma. Valued for vanquishing pain and inducing sleep, the drug also heightened fears about its habit-forming capacity. Prized amid recurring cholera epidemics, opium products also provoked deep worry over their capacity to poison and kill. This talk – previewing my next book – examines a single murder trial of an enslaved girl in 1850 Tennessee, accused to using opium to kill the infant child of her master. At issue in the case was her knowledge in the uses and misuses of laudanum, an opium concoction. The case sheds light on an unexplored aspect of the 19^th century opium dilemma – the interplay of vital need and fear of poisoning as manifest in the context of US slavery. The case also illuminates how the courts waded into this therapeutic dilemma – how law and medicine interacted in adjudicating questions of knowledge, intent, culpability, and the maintenance of social order as opium found its way onto the North American slave plantation.