1st Edition

Drugs, Alcohol and Addiction in the Long Nineteenth Century Volume I

Edited By Daniel Malleck Copyright 2020

    This collection captures key themes and issues in the broad history of addiction and vice in the Anglo-American world. Focusing on the long nineteenth-century, the volumes consider how scientific, social, and cultural experiences with drugs, alcohol, addiction, gambling, and prostitution varied around the world. What might be considered vice, or addiction could be interpreted in various ways, through various lenses, and such activities were interpreted differently depending upon the observer: the medical practitioner; the evangelical missionary; the thrill seeking bon-vivant, and the concerned government commissioner, to name but a few. For example, opium addiction in middle class households resulting from medical treatment was judged much differently than Chinese opium smoking by those in poverty or poor living conditions in North American work camps on the west coast, or on the streets of Soho.

    This collection will assemble key documents representing both the official and general view of these various activities, providing readers with a cross section of interpretations and a solid grounding in the material that shaped policy change, cultural interpretation, and social action.

    Volume 1: Drunks, fiends, and the roots of concern

    Part 1. The drug habit and its confessionals

    1. Thomas DeQuincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 2nd ed. (London: Taylor and Hessey, Fleet St., 1823), pp. 156-73.
    2. Walter Colton, ‘Effects of Opium’, The Knickerbocker, 7, 1836, 421-23.
    3. William Blair, ‘An Opium-Eater in America’, The Knickerbocker, 20, 1842, 47-57.
    4. Sigma, ‘Opium-Eating’, Lippincott’s Magazine, 1, 1868, 404-9.
    5. H. G. Cole, Confessions of an American Opium Eater: From Bondage to Freedom (Boston: James H Earle, 1895), pp. 5-7, 8-9, 27-32, 47-50, 107-119.
    6. A. Calkins, ‘Opium-Literature in the Reflex View’, in Opium and the Opium Appetite (Philadelphia: J Lippincott, 1871), pp. 88-98.
    7. Part 2. Drug use observed

    8. Anon, ‘Use of Opiates Among the Operative Population’, Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 3, 1845, 346-48.
    9. Anon, ‘The Narcotics We Indulge In’, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 74, 1853, part 1, 129-39, part 2, 605-28.
    10. Part 3. Cannabis

    11. William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, On the Preparation of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah, 1839, p. 7-13, 19-20, 36-37.
    12. F. H. Ludlow, ‘Introduction’, ‘The Night Entrance’, ‘Under the Shadow of Esculapius’, and ‘The Kingdom of the Dream’, in The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean (New York: Harper & Brother, 1857), pp. ix-xiv; 15-43
    13. Victor Robinson, An Essay on Hasheesh, including Observations and Experiments (New York: Medical Review of Reviews, 1912), pp. 38-51, 65-83.
    14. Part 4. Drink and the dilemma of habit

    15. Benjamin Rush, An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind, 6th ed. (New York: Cornelius Davis, 1811), pp. 1-32.
    16. Thomas Trotter, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Definition of Drunkenness’, in An Essay Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical on Drunkenness and its Effects on the Human Body 1st Philadelphia Edition, (Philadelphia: Anthony Finley, 1813), pp. 11-22.
    17. R. Macnish, The Anatomy of Drunkenness: An Inaugural Essay (Glasgow: W. R. McPhun, 1827), pp. 1-28.
    18. Part 5. The virtues of drink

    19. Erasmus Darwin, ‘On Drunkenness’, Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life (Fourth American edition, 1818), pp. 191-197
    20. Edward Cutbush, Observations on the Means of Preserving the Health of Soldiers and Sailors, (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1808), pp. 22-30.
    21. Francis E. Anstie, On the Uses of Wines in Health and Disease (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1870), pp. 7-48.
    22. G. G. Gervinus, Art of Drinking: A Historical Sketch (New York: United States Brewers’ Association, 1890), pp. 5-23.
    23. Part 6. Places and spaces

    24. Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1884 [1841]), pp. 172-73.
    25. Charles Dickens, ‘The Dawn’, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (London: Chapman and Hall 1870), pp. 1-3.
    26. Anon, ‘East London Opium Smokers’, London Society, 14, 1868, 68-72.
    27. J. Platt, ‘Chinese London and its Opium Dens’, Gentleman's Magazine, 279, 1895, 272-82.
    28. E. C. Moore, ‘The Social Value of the Saloon’, American Journal of Sociology 3, July 1897, 1-12.
    29. Royal L. Melendy, ‘The Saloon in Chicago’, American Journal of Sociology 6, November 1900, 289-306.
    30. Anon, ‘The Experience and Observations of a New York Saloon-Keeper as Told by Himself’, McClure Magazine 32, January 1909, 301-12.
    31. Hutchins Hapgood, ‘McSorley's Saloon’, Harper's Weekly, 58, 25 October 1913, 15.

    Biography

    Daniel Malleck is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences, Brock University, Canada