Fraser’s tablets were real, as was Orangeine. Horatio Fraser’s factory in Brooklyn burned down in 1905, with the loss of 200,000 Heroin tablets. The ad for Orangeine referred to in chapter 1 appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on September 23, 1899.
The celebration for George Dewey was as described. Five million people were said to have lined the parade route—on a per capita basis, the largest crowd ever to applaud a military leader in the nation’s history. Dewey ran for president twice but failed to secure the Republican nomination. The Dewey Arch, thrown up as quickly as described, deteriorated almost as fast. By 1903, it had begun to crumble. A campaign to raise funds to repair the structure failed, and the arch was torn down in 1906.
Justin Herold was a real person, a fascinating man who joined a number of progressive causes. He was seriously hurt in a trolley accident in 1906, remarried in his sixties, and fathered a child in his seventies. Abraham Jacobi was also real. He remains a legend among pediatricians. The Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx is named for him. Frederick Wurster was indeed the last mayor of Brooklyn. He never again ran for public office. The antipathy between Dewey and Theodore Roosevelt existed.
The Anschutz family is fictional, although the atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Philippines are not. Arnold Frias, the De Kuypers, and Noah Whitestone are all figments, but the representation of the practice of medicine in 1900 is accurate.
Heroin became a scourge, but its manufacture was not outlawed until 1914. Sale and possession, however, did not become illegal until 1919.
IMAGES ON PAGES 293 AND 294: Advertisements for Heroin, circa 1900. Published in the U.S. before 1923 and public domain.
ALSO BY
LAWRENCE GOLDSTONE
NONFICTION
Birdmen
Drive
Going Deep
Dark Bargain
The Activist
Inherently Unequal
FICTION
Anatomy of Deception
The Astronomer
DEADLY CURE
Pegasus Books Ltd.
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Copyright © 2017 by Lawrence Goldstone
First Pegasus Books cloth edition November 2017
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
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ISBN: 978-1-68177-552-4
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Deadly Cure Page 28
