Episode 4

Derived from the juice of the poppy, it relieves our pain and cures our insomnia. It may even inspire great art. It also causes addiction, misery and death. Historian Lucy Inglis' new book explores man's long and complex relationship with opium.

Advances in military technology meant that by the American Civil War in the 1860s, the most common injuries suffered by soldiers were shattered bones and lost limbs. This led to the liberal use of morphine powder to relieve pain: one military surgeon was so hard pressed during battle that he diagnosed from horseback, tipped it into his hand and had the men lick it from his palm.

After the war, morphine addiction among former soldiers was so common it came to be known as "the army disease." But it was the Vietnam War a century later that brought the idea of the "junkie soldier" into popular culture.

Milk of Paradise is written by Lucy Inglis and abridged by Anna Magnusson.

The reader is Anita Vettesse.

The producer is David Jackson Young.