As a footnote to Kathryn Hughes's review of Peter Ackroyd's biography of Wilkie Collins (What-happened-nextness, Review, 25 February), I would guess that much of the ill health Collins suffered from was neither the gout, syphilis nor neurosis that she mentions, but very possibly the effects of his "escalating addiction to laudanum", as she describes it. The ravages of the drug among 19th-century literary figures – though well known anecdotally – tend to be underestimated both by contemporary biographers and its victims.
No other 19th-century writer spoke out as freely about their addiction as did Thomas de Quincey. But then he was making a living out of it. Whereas his French translator, Charles Baudelaire – as I discovered when researching the subject for my biography (Baudelaire in Chains, Peter Owen, 2004) – went to considerable lengths to conceal his own addiction. As did many British public figures who, probably rightly, felt that their reputations as upright members of the establishment would be tarnished if the news got around. The dire case of Clive of India is one that springs to mind.
And I have long suspected that the mystery illness Florence Nightingale brought back from the Crimea was, in fact, laudanum addiction which she dealt with by spending the last 10 years of her life directing her medical reform activities from the comfort of her bed. It was not really until significant numbers of agricultural workers in East Anglia were found to be leaning on their implements in unproductive trances that their betters began to feel it was time to do something about it.
Frank Hilton
London