When one thinks of addiction in the nineteenth century, varied images might come to mind: the cultured opium-eater indulging his arcane, secret habit; the drunken working man sprawling in the street, and the blue-nosed temperance spinster haranguing him; the refined lady taking perhaps a touch more alcohol than her physician has prescribed for her neuralgia; the underworld of opium dens where Chinese sailors lie on couches in a glazed stupor. Each of these images springs from a history of a specific kind of consumption that was unknown before the nineteenth century, and which has become increasingly intelligible in the twentieth. By sketching the nineteenth-century origins of addiction, this essay offers new contexts for these stereotypes and new ways of understanding them.
- Victorian Terms used to Describe Addiction
- Habits
- Temperance and Teetotalism
- The Medical "Discovery" of Addiction
- Conclusion: Acts and Identities
Related Material
- England and China: The Opium Wars, 1839-60
- The Medicinal Use of Opium in England
- Commissioner Lin Ze-xu's Letter to Queen Victoria
- The Principle of Extraterritoriality and the Opium Wars, 1839-60
- Representations of Drugs in Nineteenth-Century Literature
- The Opium Trade (the 1843 Illustrated London News)
Further Reading
Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1815-1885. London: Methuen, 1978.
Berridge, Virginia and Griffith Edwards. Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England. London: St. Martin's Press, 1981.
Bynum, W. F. "Alcoholism and Degeneration in 19th Century European Medicine and Psychiatry." British Journal of Addiction 79 (1984): 59-70.
Driscoll, Lawrence. Rediscovering Drugs: Mapping Victorian and Modern Drug Discourses. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Trans. A. M. Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. I. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Harding, Geoffrey. Opiate Addiction, Morality and Medicine: From Moral Illness to Pathological Disease. London: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Harrison, Brian. Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.
Howard-Jones, Norman. "A Critical Study of the Origins and Early Development of Hypodermic Medication." Journal of the History of Medicine 2, no. 2 (Spring 1947): 201-249.
McCandless, Peter. " 'Curses of Civilization': Insanity and Drunkenness in Victorian Britain." British Journal of Addiction 79 (1984): 49-58.
Milligan, Barry. Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Malcolm, Elizabeth. "Ireland Sober, Ireland Free": Drink and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1986.
Milligan, Barry. Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Parssinen, Terry. Secret Passions, Secret Remedies: Narcotic Drugs in British Society, 1820-1930. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983.
Porter, Roy and Mikulas Teich. Drugs and Narcotics in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Sedgwick, Eve. Tendencies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.
Valverde, Mariana. Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Created 7 September 2002
Last modified 9 December 2022