Godfrey's Cordial

The original formula was named after apothecary Thomas Godfrey of Hunsdon in Hertfordshire. After his death in 1721, without leaving a clear heir to his work, == Infant deaths and usage ==

Godfrey's cordial had long been recognised as leading to fatal cases of opium poisoning. However, it continued to be made and used until the early twentieth century, Its low cost and a lack of public knowledge about infant management exact numbers are hard to ascertain. Those who survived often, reportedly, had a severely damaged physical constitution. == Decline ==

In 1857, with ill-advised opioid usage reaching alarming levels, a parliamentary bill was put forward which classified opium and its derivatives as poisons. This was intended to severely restrict the sale of such compounds, but it failed to pass through parliament, after being subject to intensive lobbying by trading chemists. It was also widely criticised as an impractical solution from an overall perspective. A much-diluted version of the original proposed bill was finally implemented as the Pharmacy Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 121) which limited the sale of opium derivatives to registered chemists and legally qualified apothecaries. It explicitly excused patent medicines (and thus Godfrey's Cordial) from its purview. Usage of Godfrey's Cordial gradually declined post-1890 as several court rulings held that the act applied equally to patent medicines and the British Medical Association subsequently published lists of safe home remedies, in a bid to increase public health awareness, which mentioned calomel and sugar-based derivatives as substitute sedative agents. Finally, the Pharmacy Act 1908, which classified it as a Schedule-I poison, followed by the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo. 5. c. 46) which mandated a medical prescription, heavily restricted the availability and usage of any such opioid-based drug. ==References==