"Mania Americana": Narcotic Addiction and Modernity in the United States, 1870-1920

Abstract

The ancients paid sacred homage to Morpheus, god of sleep and dreams; and now, in the midst of an age of intelligence and advancement, we find a vast army of men and women bowing at the shrine of the arch-fiend Morphia, named after the classic deity of old.-Leslie E. Keeley, M.D., 1897 Despite its long association with Asian cultures, habitual narcotic use gained little public attention in the West before the publication of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in 1822. De Quincey's text was popular on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and its conclusions about the "pains" involved in breaking off opium use were echoed by frequent reports from nineteenth-century physicians whose otherwise cured patients were sometimes unable to stop taking their narcotic medications. Nonetheless, few antebellum Americans felt themselves or their society to be particularly threatened by narcotics. The vast publicity created by the various temperance movements helped generate public anxiety over the widespread social consequences of heavy drinking, but fear of narcotic drugs did not particularly grip the public imagination. This relative obscurity would not outlast the century. 1 Timothy A. Hickman teaches U.S. history at Lancaster University in northwest England. have offered careful and critical insights that far exceed what I could practically incorporate into this essay. I delivered preliminary versions to the American studies department at Birmingham University (United Kingdom) and the history department at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom).Readers may contact Hickman at <t.a.hickman@lancaster.ac.uk>.

Heroin Mismatch in the Motor City: Addiction, Segregation, and the Geography of Opportunity

“…Historians have taken a broader view, examining heroin use as it relates to American culture and politics (Musto, 1973); to the strains produced by the racial divisions and inequalities of urban environments (Schneider, 2008); and to modernity itself (Hickman, 2004). But drugs are also tangible physical commodities that command a price and actively mobilize buyers and sellers across multiple geographic scales (Pearson and Hobbs, 2001).…”

Keeping secrets: Leslie E. Keeley, the gold cure and the 19th‐century neuroscience of addiction

“…The tonic was based allegedly on the ‘bi‐chloride of gold’ as its active ingredient. Gold was an old homeopathic remedy and a powerful rhetorical tool in late 19th‐century American political culture . The company made the most of gold's figurative value in its advertising, but Keeley also understood his cure in terms of its direct application to addiction's status as a brain disease: ‘Gold acts primarily upon the nerve tissue that is most unstable or that is highest in its complex development and function.…”

Leaky Borders: Smuggling Opium and Chinese Labor in Progressive‐Era Motion Pictures

“…Prior to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, patent medicines and other products commonly included opiates (opium, heroin, and morphine), which physicians prescribed for pain relief. During the late nineteenth century, opium addiction amongst the purported respectable classes considerably increased in light of overwhelming technological, social, and political changes related to modernity (Hickman; Musto 2–3). Antiopium activists, however, fervently blamed Chinese communities for introducing these habit‐forming drugs to non‐Asians, “whose delicate nervous organization” apparently made them “more susceptible to the deleterious effects of narcotic stimulants” than “the Chinaman or Hindoo” (“The Opium Habit,” Catholic World , September 1881, 832).…”