First a little about the movie:
The Proposition, is a movie released in 2005 staring, Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone and Emily Watson. The movie is set in 1880 Australia.
The basic description of the film is this:
To save one brother, an outlaw in 1880's Australia must hunt down and kill his eldest sibling. The eldest sibling is wanted for Rape and murder of a whole family.
Okay so my question is this:
One of the main characters in the film is Captain Stanley, he is the one who is trying to bring law and order to this horrible place. During the whole film he gets these terrible headaches that litterally knock him down. He takes a medication for it and I want to know what the medication is. When he is out and about and not at home he will unroll a piece of paper that contains his medicine which he puts right from the paper into his mouth. When he is at home his wife unwraps the paper (which kinda looks like it could contain candy) and she drops the medicine in a small glass of what I think is water. I tried to do some searches online about what this medication actually is but I found nothing.
~I am really interested to know what the medicine is. The person who wrote the script obviously meant for it to be something that existed during those times. Please don't just guess when answering. I am only interested in hearing from someone who actually knows.
Thanks so much!
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
I remember what you say, having seen the movie recently. But what I recall or imagine is that he uses a painkiller powder.
I looked up on wikipedia when the movie is set, and it says it is the 1880's.
So I guess you're looking for a powder painkiller before the 1880's. As a result it can't be aspirin because it was isolated in 1897.
It can be that the scriptwriter Nick Cave has not paid attention to when aspirin was isolated and thus has made a mistake.
Not a definite answers, just a few handles.
I don't believe it is every mentioned exactly what he uses but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a form of Morphine. The reason I say is that other westerns based in the 1880s often reference Morphine as a common use of pain relief in various forms.
Half a spoonful of citric acid (usually) dissolved in half a glass of water.