Opium, Morphine, and Heroine on History Channel

[rpd_girl]

very interesting program on the history channel last night... covered a lot of info concerning opiates used on the battle fields, the invention of the hypodermic needle, and the creation of a addict generation with vets post-CW. I'm sure they'll play it several more times, keep an eye out.

[Slickrick214]

I saw it and It comes on alot. Its one of those shows the history channel plays over and over again.

[rpd_girl]

yeah, i think I saw bits and pieces on before... it's part of a series about illegal drugs that they've been running. Although, that's the only one i really found interesting.

[NoahBriggs]

Unfortunately the post war generation of morphine addicts is a mythology. I do not deny there were addicts, I indicate the numbers which were given on the show seem inflated compared to the actual medical records compiled from the pensions. Access to morphine was not necessarily restricted, but it was expensive to manufacture and/or acquire. Likewisev - hypodermics, which had been around only since 1853 or so, and were not the type of thing marketed towards the general public. (They were pretty scarce during the war.)

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/soldis.htm
The article has a pro-legalization bias to it, but his analysis of the data makes for an interesting read.

Laudanum and paregoric would be the opiates du jour for over-the-counter use, as they were medicines commonly dispensed to soldiers by the surgeons. The surgeons knew what they were doing and adminstered the medicines in moderate amounts, and were on the lookout for possible addictions. Assuming addicts had access to regular supply and/or knew of smoking dens then smoking or chewing the opium paste raw would be the best way to satisfy the craving.

Heroin was developed in 1898 by the Bayer Corporation as a cure for opiate addiction, until someone discovered that heroin was just as easy to which one could become addicted. Heroin is something the Bayer company would prefer to forget inventing. The terms "kicking the habit" and "quitting cold turkey" are slang terms which actually reference heroin withdrawl symptoms, namely, the jitters and goosebumps. This pattern of using another drug to help quit a drug habit still persists with the debate of using methadone to relieve heroin addictions.

www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov

Sure would be nice if the History Channel actually bothered to interview the staff at the DEA Museum. The staff there are bottomless vats of pharmaceutical and controlled substance information. Their regular display has the history of drug abuse laid out from about the 1850s to today, complete with original paraphenelia (sp.) What's more, they have a lot of primary sources. I actually worked with them and with DEA's library to research different drugs which were available in "our" time. It's fascinating stuff, and without the commercial breaks, too.

http://www.deamuseum.org/

there is also a difference between what's available and what was used. Example. The DEA Library has a couple of "history of hemp" books with a strong pro-legalization slant. The authors wrote that because hemp was available in the 19th century that someone discovered you could smoke it and get high. They point to ill-sourced anecdotes of Mr. Lincoln sitting on his porch in Kentucky smoking hemp.

I have never read any primary source which mentioned anything about someone smoking hemp recreationally medicinally. That does not mean it may have happened, but I'd like to see some real documentation first. And one source does not mean it was common. (This is called the "gross generalization" fallacy, where one source which is cited is used to justify it as common everywhere.)

Was marijuana used as a medicine? Henry Beasley mentions it in his book of 2900 prescriptions. However, he mentions it as a tincture, which means the juices and/or sap of the plant were extracted and percolated through alcohol to preserve it so it did not go bad. It was used to treat the severe pain of glaucoma among other things. I have seen some jars labelled "Tr. Cannabis", so we know that in theory it's available at the pharmacy.

http://tinyurl.com/yw58fw Page 159 on medicinal Cannabis, Beasley's 2900 Prescriptions


Tincture Cannabis jar, c. 1880s, DEA Museum exhibit "Good Medicine; Bad Behavior: The History of Drug Diversion in America". www.goodmedicinebadbehavior.org

Conclusion for the above. We know that cannabis is available as a prescription drug by the 1850s and has the ability to be prescribed. The next step is to find an actual reference by a doctor or someone else which tells us it was in fact A) truly prescribed, and B) actually adminstered.

In other words, just because it was available does not mean it was actually used.

A last note and then I'll shut up - I feel the History channel prefers to play to sensationalism than to serious historical documentaries these days. Their series on illegal drugs plays up the tillitation that our ancestors tolerated the use of these these drugs and that abuse or misuse was not understood because of course, "the doctors were stupid/uneducated/quacks who did not know any better", which is a mythology the regular posters in this conference are trying very hard to correct.

[Marc]

Noah,

I must agree with you about the History Channel and its series on drugs.

As most programs on the History Channel are interesting, you must carefully separate the shaft from the wheat so to speak. When I see something new on the History Channel I always check other sources to see if correct.

[NoahBriggs]

The subject matter bothers me - the history of fringe stuff, such as "Was Hitler's dog psychic when on methamphetamine during the Roman Era? Find out next, on History's Mysteries." Real historians and those who are critical thinkers get little airtime to voice their views, and the "believers" and fringe historians seem to get the major time on the show.

Anyway, back to the drugs. (That came out wrong, but you get the idea.)

[hanktrent]

I have never read any primary source which mentioned anything about someone smoking hemp recreationally medicinally. That does not mean it may have happened, but I'd like to see some real documentation first. And one source does not mean it was common.

Haven't seen the show, since we don't get cable here, but I also agree that I've not seen much evidence that smoking hemp and/or Indian cannabis was the delivery-method of choice in the U.S.

There was a flurry of interest in recreational use of imported hasheesh (medicinal cannabis) in the late 1850s, but it seems to have been generally swallowed rather than smoked, though it was smoked in foreign countries.

It seems to have been a drug associated with the exotic, the artistic and the intellectual, rather than the farmhands on the hemp plantation down the road. I'd guess that was probably due to the fact that there wasn't a reliable amount of THC in fiber hemp, so the good stuff required importation and a knowledge of what to ask for and how much to take, compared to the easier and more familiar recreational uses of alcohol, tobacco and opium.

Here's an article from April 1858 Harper's http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Lu...ts/eaters.html

It includes the following:

Although so little is known of hasheesh in this country that the name is scarce familiar to the general reader, it appears that the drug, in one form or other, has been known to Eastern nations from very early times.
* * *
We are, however, in very little danger of becoming a nation of hasheesh-eaters. A predisposing warmth and activity of imagination - a common quality with Eastern races, but a rare one with us - is absolutely necessary to enable a man to become a hasheesh-eater to any purpose. The vast majority of experiments made by Europeans and Americans resulted in naught but a general and painful disturbance of the nervous system - preceded, in a large number of instances, by a condition of insensibility, lasting from twenty-four to thirty-three hours. The hasheesh fantasia seems physically unattainable to the great majority of the Anglo-Saxon race.

I just don't think there's going to be enough evidence of domestic hemp being smoked to consider it a common social phenomenon in the U.S. It was something those furriners did, not us.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[FloridaConfederate]

New York Hearld - September 25, 1861

Hashish .

Three Italian gentlemen in London recently made some experiments with hashish. They took four closes in succession, and did not get rid of the effects of the powerful drug for nearly thirty-six hours. They beat one another without feeling the pain; suffered from convulsions; one believed his brain had turned into marble, and his right eye "for a long time retained the sensation of marble hardness." In his mind ideas succeeded each other with such rapidity that they made a short space of time seem very long. These ideas, although more often scattered, had at times an intimate and long connection; thus every person who had ever assisted him he seemed to see for years and years, performing all those long and varied series of acts which might in reality have been performed during such a period, so that he felt convinced that all those years had really passed. He also had a sort of hallucination, in which he seemed transported to a palace whimsically made of brass; this, he thought, was the vestibule of Mohammed's paradise, and that he was denied entrance to it. On going out he found himself launched into space, and compelled to describe very rapidly a vast orbit, in a gloomy, painfully breathing, oppressive circle. This painful sensation lasted a long time, and was among the most disagreeable of the experiment.

[amity]

I just don't think there's going to be enough evidence of domestic hemp being smoked to consider it a common social phenomenon in the U.S. It was something those furriners did, not us.

Hank, I don't know about that, I imagine that there was a decent amount of hemp smoking going on among ALL classes. I have not read this source (and there are others out there, too) but it seems there is a good bit of documentation available. If anyone wants to read this please let us all know the verdict:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TCw...ZOJaocbPrxxEKM

Here's another:
http://www.rexresearch.com/hhist/hhist2~1.htm

I hope that works, but at any rate, typing "smoking hemp in U.S. history" or something similar turns up quite a few relelvant looking hits. I have heard stories. Of course this is in areas where hemp was grown, which wasn't everywhere. Other places had different substances, of course.

[NoahBriggs]

http://books.google.com/books?id=TCw...Ja ocbPrxxEKM

That's the book I read from the DEA library. I'm still out to lunch on the idea. I'll need to double-check his sources, as the book is obviously pushing a pro-legalization agenda.

Here's another:
http://www.rexresearch.com/hhist/hhist2~1.htm


The original sources cited in that article regarding "hemp the early years" point to the references of hasheesh eating, as opposed to smoking, which includes a reference to putting hashish/hemp/marijuana products into foods, and getting the idea of "educating himself with the description of "Extract of Hemp" in The Dispensatory of the United States, he proceeded to experiment with the substance for two years until 1857 before quitting his trials, which he later described in his memoirs, The Hashish Eater. (40, 41) ."

I'd like to see if it was actually administered medicinally and if anyone recorded the results. Actual experimentation seems to have gotten into gear by the 1850s or so, and takes off post-war.