....more

In 1896 the English surgeon Herbert Snow showed that morphine and cocaine, when combined into an elixir, could give relief to patients with advanced cancer. About thirty years later a similar approach was used at London's Brompton Hospital as a cough sedative for patients with tuberculosis. In the early 1950s this formulation appeared in print for the first time, containing morphine hydrochloride, cocaine hydrochloride, alcohol, syrup, and chloroform water.
In her first publication, Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, also referred to such a mixture, which included nepenthe, or liquor morphini hydrochloride, cocaine hydrochloride, tincture of cannabis, gin, syrup, and chloroform water; she was enthusiastic about its value to terminally ill patients. Over the next twenty years of writing and lecturing, Saunders did much to promote this mixture and other variants of the "Brompton Cocktail."
A survey of teaching and general hospitals in the United Kingdom showed the mixture and its variants to be in widespread use in 1972. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist and pioneer of endof-life care, became one of its supporters, as did some of the pioneers of pain medicine and palliative care in Canada, including Ronald Melzack and Balfour Mount, who saw it as a powerful means of pain relief.