The Making of Addiction: The 'use and Abuse' of Opium in Nineteenth-century Britain

208 Pages·2007·0.74 MB·English

by  Louise Foxcroft

THE MAKING OF ADDICTION
The History of Medicine in Context
Series Editors: Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Cambridge
Department of History
The Open University
Titles in this series include:
The Rise of Causal Concepts of Disease
Case Histories
K. Codell Carter
Florence Nightingale and the Health of the Raj
Jharna Gourlay
Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
Angela Montford
‘The Battle for Health’
A Political History of the Socialist Medical Association, 1930–51
John Stewart
The Making of Addiction
The ‘Use and Abuse’ of Opium
in Nineteenth-Century Britain
LOUISE FOXCROFT
Independent Scholar
© Louise Foxcroft, 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Louise Foxcroft has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
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Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Foxcroft, Louise
The Making of Addiction: The ‘Use and Abuse’ of Opium in Nineteeth-Century Britain.
– (The History of Medicine in Context)
1. Opium abuse – Great Britain – History – 19th century. 2. Drug addiction –
Great Britain – History – 19th century. I.Title.
362.2’93’0941’09034
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foxcroft, Louise, 1956–
The Making of Addiction: The Use and Abuse of Opium in Nineteenth-Century Britain /
Louise Foxcroft.
p. cm. – (The History of Medicine in Context)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Opium – Therapeutic use – Great Britain – History – 19th century. 2. Opium abuse
– Great Britain – History – 19th century. I. Title. II. Series.
RM666.06F69 2007
615’.323350941–dc22 2006016953
ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5633-3
This book has been printed on acid-free paper.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmind, Cornwall.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
Perspectives on addiction 1
Modern definitions of addiction 6
Opium in context: a brief history of antiquity of use, methods of
production, and means of imbibing 8
Concluding remarks 12
Part I: The Cultural History of Addiction in Nineteenth-Century Britain
2 The Experience of Addiction in the Early Nineteenth Century 17
Experience and empathy 17
Thomas De Quincey and the experience of addiction 19
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the experience of addiction 30
3 Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century Addiction: Fact and Fiction 39
The double-edged sword of opium 39
Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary
experiences of addiction 40
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning 46
Lizzie Siddall and Dante Gabriel Rossetti 48
Opium addiction in mid - to late Victorian fiction 51
Concluding remarks 58
4 The Chinese Influence 61
News of foreign practices 61
The anti-opium movement 65
Medicine and the Chinese influence 72
Concluding remarks 75
vi THE MAKING OF ADDICTION
Part II: The Medical History of Addiction in Nineteenth-Century Britain
5 Poisonous Drugs and the Medical Profession in the Nineteenth Century 79
The poisonous beginnings of ‘use and abuse’ 79
Early warnings 80
The case of the Earl of Mar 83
Suicide, accidental poisoning, and the growing response 89
Poisonous fears and poisonous years 100
Toxicology: the need to define poison 105
Concluding remarks 110
6 Observation and Experience: The Enquiries of Medicine into Addiction 113
Background to changes into the medical perception of addiction 113
Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writings on addiction 116
Addiction as a disease 119
Medical responsibility and culpability 126
Concluding remarks 137
7 Late Nineteenth-Century Theories of Addiction: The Pathologist,
the Physician, and the Philosopher 139
The swing of the pendulum 139
The pathologist 142
The physician 151
The philosopher 159
Concluding remarks 164
Conclusion 165
Appendix 1: Opium strengths and doses 171
Appendix 2: Opium and alcohol 173
Bibliography 179
Index 189
Acknowledgements
I owe my great thanks to Vic Gatrell whose advice on this book was indispensable
and whose good humour scarcely failed him at all. The late Brian Outhwaite was
unfailingly kind and encouraging, always generous with his time and patience. I am
grateful, too, to Fiona Green who spent many hours discussing it all with me and
then scrutinised the final draft. Any mistakes that remain are mine alone. My thanks,
too, to Anna Abulafia for her constant support from the very beginning, and to Lucy
Cavendish College, Cambridge for generously providing financial assistance.
But what is experience where opium is concerned?
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868)
Chapter One
Introduction
The first dose is taken, and mark the transformation. This overmastering palliative creates
such a confident, serene, and devil-may-care assurance that one does not for once think of
the final result. The sweetness of such harmony can never give way to monotony. Volition
is suspended … when distress supervenes, you go at once for the only balm that abounds
in Gilead, and every additional dose is but another thread, however invisible, of which the
web is made that binds us fast as fate.1
Perspectives on addiction
What does addiction mean to us now, what has it meant to others in the past, and
how are all these meanings connected? The phenomenon of addiction has a long
socio-cultural history but the field of knowledge that has developed around it is
very recent. Historically, certain individuals have used ‘certain substances in certain
ways thought at certain times to be unacceptable by certain other individuals for
reasons both certain and uncertain’.2 But is this behaviour natural or pathological? Is
it, even, morally reprehensible? This book is a social and intellectual history of the
concept of addiction, concentrating on the use and abuse of opiates. It looks at public
and personal perceptions of chronic opiate use in the nineteenth century and at the
development of addiction as a medical condition, a disease entity, where, despite
earlier experiences of ‘habit’ and ‘enthralment’, no such definition had previously
existed. Contrary to Thomas De Quincey’s dictum this thesis takes the opium-eater
as its hero and not opium itself.3
The personal and imaginative life of the nineteenth-century chronic opium user
could not help but fashion the medical and popular understanding of addiction. The
experiences and ideas of opium users informed, influenced and manipulated medical
knowledge in a cross-referential manner. Addiction was initially understood from
a non-empirical, non-scientific viewpoint and even later, after the mid-nineteenth-
century epistemological shift towards medicalisation of the condition, the concept
was not based exclusively on pathological and physiological interpretation.
1 J.B. Mattison, ‘Opium Addiction Among Medical Men’, Medical Record, 1883, 23,
pp.621-3.
2 H. Schaffer and M.E. Burglass, eds, Classic Contributions in the Addictions (1981),
p.xix.
3 ‘Not the opium-eater, but the opium is the true hero of the tale’, Thomas De
Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), p.78.