An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine

366 Pages·2011·9.22 MB·English

by  Howard Markel

Copyright © 2011 by Howard Markel
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Markel, Howard.
An anatomy of addiction : Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the miracle drug cocaine / Howard Markel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37981-8
1. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. 2. Psychoanalysts—Austria—Biography. 3. Halsted, William, 1852–1922. 4. Surgeons—United States—Biography. 5. Cocaine—History. 6. Cocaine abuse. I. Title.
BF109.A1M37 2011 362.29’80922—dc22 2010033782
www.pantheonbooks.com
Jacket design by Peter Mendelsund
Book design by Virginia Tan
v3.1
For Bess and Sammy,
with love from Daddy
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Prologue
1. Young Freud
2. Young Halsted
3. Über Coca
4. An Addict’s Death
5. The Accidental Addict
6. Cocaine Damnation
7. Sigmund in Paris
8. Rehabilitating Halsted
9. The Interpretation of Dreams
10. “The Professor”
11. Dr. Freud’s Coca Coda
12. Dr. Halsted in Limbo
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Other Books by This Author
Acknowledgments
IT IS A PLEASURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE and thank those who helped convert this book
from a mere idea into an actual volume.
To begin, I am most fortunate in finding an academic home at the University
of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Working with so many talented scholars, scientists,
and physicians in the midst of such extraordinary resources has advanced my
work in more ways than I can enumerate. At the University of Michigan Center
for the History of Medicine, I am grateful to Professor Alexandra Minna Stern
for her warm friendship, encouragement, and careful reading of my work; Dr. J.
Alexander Navarro, who is as able a digital and computer wizard as he is a
historian; Mary Beth Reilly for her superb reference and fact-checking; and
Scott Oosterdorp for his helpful library searches when I was otherwise occupied.
I am indebted to Professor Daniel Herwitz, who directs the University of
Michigan Institute for the Humanities, where I was the John Rich Professor
during the 2005–06 academic year, and who patiently read every page of the
manuscript, much to my delight and this book’s improvement. Similar thanks go
to Professor Michael Schoenfeldt, the chairman of the University of Michigan
Department of English Literature and Language. He is a treasured friend and a
thoughtful reader.
From 2004 to 2010, I was fortunate to serve as a physician at the University of
Michigan Addiction Treatment Service. There I saw hundreds of patients with
substance abuse and addiction problems in collaboration with a dedicated and
talented staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. I thank the
medical director, Dr. Kirk Brower (who also read and helped improve the
scientific portions of this book), Dr. Robert Zucker, Dr. John Greden, Dr. Maher
Karem-Hage, Michael Wallace, and Randall Pomeroy for teaching me so much
about this stubborn and crafty disease. Although I am honor-bound to respect the
anonymity of my patients and many members of the Ann Arbor recovery
community whom I met along the way, I thank them as well for enriching my
work and life. Their experiences, hopes, and strengths were essential in helping
me to better understand Sigmund Freud and William Halsted.
I also thank Dr. David McDowell of Mount Sinai Medical School, Dr.
Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical
Association, Dr. James Harris of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Sherwin
B. Nuland of Yale University, Dr. Stephen Bergman (a.k.a. Samuel Shem, M.D.),
Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, Dr. Martin Cetron of the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, Professor David Rosner of Columbia
University, Don Bosco Hewlett, Eric Lax, and Dr. Sheldon F. Markel for taking
the time to read the manuscript with careful and generous eyes.
All historians claim libraries as their workshops, but once there they rely
heavily on the librarians and archivists who curate the historical collections. The
staffs of the University of Michigan Libraries, the Bentley Historical Library of
the University of Michigan (Francis Blouin, William Wallach, and Brian
Williams), the Alan Mason Chesney Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical
Institutions (Nancy McCall and Andrew Harrison), the Weill Medical College at
Cornell University/New York Hospital Archives (James Gehrlich), the Freud
Museum of Vienna (Claudia Muchitsch, Christian Humber, and Martina Gasser),
the Freud Museum of London (Carol Siegel), the Josephinum Medical History
Museum at the University of Vienna (Dr. Ruth Koblizek), the Gesellschaft der
Ärzte / Society of Physicians in Vienna (Manfred Gschwandtner), the Historical
Collections of the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Public
Library, the Yale University Archives (Geoff Zonder), the F. L. Erhman Medical
Library of the New York University School of Medicine (Colleen Bradley-
Saunders), the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore, the National Library of
Medicine, the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the Wellcome
Library of the History of Medicine in London all performed their tasks with
professionalism and speed. I hope that a collective thank-you will suffice.
I am also grateful to the Sigmund Freud Archives and the Sigmund Freud
Collection at the Library of Congress for allowing me to quote several short
passages from letters Sigmund wrote to his then fiancée and later wife, Martha
Bernays, and to many of his colleagues, including Wilhelm Fleiss.
My literary agents, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu of Writer’s Representatives,
are, quite simply, the best practitioners of their profession. They believed in this
project from the very start and never flagged in their encouragement, creativity,
and advice. It is a pleasure to thank them, once again.
This is the second book I have completed under the tutelage of my
extraordinary editor, Victoria Wilson, vice president and associate publisher of
Alfred A. Knopf. She continues to hold me to the highest standards of writing,
and I am grateful for her wise suggestions and counsel. I am also indebted to her
editorial assistant, Carmen Johnson, for her cheerful demeanor and
professionalism; to copy editor Bonnie Thompson for her superb attention to
questions of language, grammar, and factual detail; and to the entire staff at
Pantheon, especially Ellen Feldman, who performed their jobs with insight and
ability.
I must add that while all of these people have generously given me superb
assistance, any errors or defects that remain in the book are mine alone. Those
flaws, I hope, are neither glaring nor fatal.
Finally, I thank my family for their support and love during the past seven
years as I tracked the lives of Sigmund and William. My wife, Kate Levin
Markel, scrutinized and improved every page of this book. Our daughters, Bess
Rachel, age ten, and Samantha Louise, age five and who answers to “Sammy,”
are the lights of our lives. They never complained as I isolated myself during the
throes of composition and were especially encouraging when the work was not
always going smoothly. This book is dedicated to my wonderful girls and
signifies my hope for their brilliant and healthy futures.
Howard Markel
Ann Arbor, Michigan
September 20, 2010
Illustrations
prl.1 Bellevue ambulance, lower Manhattan, c. 1885. New York University
School of Medicine, Ehrman Medical Library Archive prl.2 William
Stewart Halsted, age twenty-eight, c. 1880. Alan Mason Chesney Archives
of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland
prl.3 Main entrance of the Vienna General Hospital, c. 1885. Collections
of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, Ann
Arbor, Michigan prl.4 Vial of cocaine hydrochloride, c. 1884. Collections
of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, Ann
Arbor, Michigan 1.1 The University of Vienna, c. 1884. Collections of the
University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor,
Michigan 1.2 Sigmund Freud birthplace, Príbor, Moravia, 1931.
Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of
Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1.3 Freud, age six, 1862. The Freud
Museum, London, Great Britain 1.4 Jacob Freud, age forty-nine, and son
Sigmund, age eight, 1864. The Freud Museum, London, Great Britain
1.5 The extended Freud family, 1878. The Freud Museum, London, Great
Britain 1.6 Martha Bernays and her sister Minna, c. July 1882. Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.
1.7 Sigmund Freud, age twenty-eight, July 26, 1884. The Freud Museum,
London, Great Britain 1.8 Carl Claus, Vienna Institute of Zoology, c.
1885. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of
Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1.9 Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke.
Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of
Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1.10 Vienna Institute of Physiology, c.
1885. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of
Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1.11 Theodor Billroth, University of
Vienna, c. 1880. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland
1.12 Hermann Nothnagel, professor of medicine at Vienna. Collections of
the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor,
Michigan 1.13 Theodor Meynert, director of the Second Psychiatric Clinic
at the Krankenhaus. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for
the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1.14 Freud, age twenty-six,
1882–83. The Freud Museum, London, Great Britain 1.15 Vienna General
Hospital, c. 1882. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the
History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1.16 Sigmund Freud, age
twenty-seven, and Martha Bernays, age twenty-two, c. 1883. The Freud
Museum, London, Great Britain 2.1 William Halsted with his mother,
sister, and older brother, c. 1860. Alan Mason Chesney Archives of the
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland 2.2 Halsted, age
fourteen, with his father, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, c. 1866. Alan
Mason Chesney Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions,
Baltimore, Maryland 2.3 Halsted, age sixteen, 1868. Alan Mason Chesney
Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland
2.4 Halsted, age twenty, with Yale football team, 1872. Collections of
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
2.5 Halsted’s medical school: the New York College of Physicians and
Surgeons. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History
of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 2.6 Bellevue Hospital, 1879. New York
University School of Medicine, Ehrman Medical Library Archives
2.7 Block Island. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the
History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 2.8 Bellevue Hospital’s main
gate, 1878 or 1879. New York University School of Medicine, Ehrman
Medical Library Archives 2.9 Halsted’s internship class at Bellevue, 1878.
New York University School of Medicine, Ehrman Medical Library
Archives 3.1 Coca leaves. Collections of the University of Michigan
Libraries, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.2 Alexander von Humboldt, age
seventy-one, 1840. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for
the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.3 William H. Prescott, c.
1840. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of
Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.4 Angelo Mariani, creator and masterful
marketer of Vin Mariani, c. 1890. Collections of the University of
Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.5 A
bottle of Vin Mariani. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for
the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.6 An advertisement for
Vin Mariani, c. 1890s. Collections of the University of Michigan Center
for the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.7 An advertising
poster for Vin Mariani, c. 1890s. Collections of the University of Michigan
Center for the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.8 A Coca-Cola
advertisement, c. 1905. Collections of the University of Michigan Center
for the History of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan 3.9 Hervey Parke and