Iatrogenic means caused by a doctor. If a doctor overprescribes opioids, it can lead to iatrogenic addiction.
Iatrogenic Quotes in Dopesick
The Dopesick quotes below are all either spoken by Iatrogenic or refer to Iatrogenic. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
By the 1870s, injecting morphine was so popular among the upper classes in Europe and the United States that doctors used it for a variety of ailments, from menstrual pain to inflammation of the eyes. The almost total lack of regulatory oversight created a kind of Wild West for patent medicines, with morphine and opium pills available at the nearest drugstore counter, no prescription necessary. As long as a doctor initially OK’d the practice, even injected morphine was utterly accepted. Daily users were not socially stigmatized, because reliance on the drug was iatrogenic.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Dopesick LitChart as a printable PDF.
Iatrogenic Term Timeline in Dopesick
The timeline below shows where the term Iatrogenic appears in Dopesick. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...salespeople. To advertise it, Dr. J. David Haddox, head pain specialist at Purdue, claimed that iatrogenic (meaning doctor-caused) addiction was extremely rare.
(full context)
Chapter 3
...movement of OxyContin from rural areas into the cities and suburbs resembles the wave of iatrogenic morphine and opium addiction that swept through the nation about a century earlier. Eventually, opioid...
(full context)
