author
Horace B. Day
1819–1870
Best known for The Opium Habit, this 19th-century writer gathered firsthand accounts and reflections on addiction into a book that still feels strikingly candid. His work sits at the meeting point of memoir, social observation, and early writing about dependency and recovery.
1 Audiobook
The Opium Habit
by Horace B. Day
About the author
Horace B. Day was an American author born in 1819 and died in 1870. Surviving catalog records consistently connect him with The Opium Habit: With Suggestions as to the Remedy, first published in 1868, a book compiled for readers concerned with opium use and its consequences.
Rather than writing in a distant or purely clinical way, Day assembled personal testimony, literary excerpts, and practical discussion into a volume meant to speak directly to sufferers as well as general readers. That approach gives his work an unusual voice for its time: serious, sympathetic, and deeply interested in the lived experience of addiction.
Little biographical information appears to be readily confirmed beyond his dates and authorship, so his reputation today rests mainly on that book and its continued circulation in major public-domain and library collections. For modern listeners, he remains an intriguing figure from the 19th century whose writing offers a revealing glimpse into early attempts to understand habit, dependence, and reform.