High Society The Central Role of Mind-Altering Drugs in History, Science, and Culture

222 Pages·2010·54.69 MB·English

by  Mike Jay

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About the Author
Mike Jay has written widely on the cultural history of science and
medicine, and is a leading specialist in the study of drugs across history
and cultures. He is the editor of Artificial Paradises, an anthology of drug
literature, and author of the widely acclaimed Emperors of Dreams, a
narrative history of drugs in the nineteenth century, and The Atmosphere
of Heaven, on the discovery of nitrous oxide. His critical writing on drugs
and their histories has appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and
The London Review of Books.
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Other titles of interest published by
Park Street Press include:
The Psychotropic Mind
Salvia Divinorum
The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios
See our website
www.parkstpress.com
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CONTENTS
Foreword
A Universal Impulse
High Societies - The Evolution of Drugs - Animal Intoxication - Drugs and
Shamanism - Drugs and Culture - The Culture of Kava - The Culture of
Betel - Drug Prohibitions - Drug Subcultures - The Cultures of Ecstasy
From Apothecary to Laboratory
What Is a Drug? - Drugs in Antiquity - Renaissance Herbals - Witches and
Flying Ointments - The Invention of Laudanum - Linnaeus and the
Enlightenment - The First Synthetic Drugs - Opium and the Romantics -
The Club des Haschischins - Freud and Cocaine - Addiction and Drug
Control - Mescaline, LSD and Beyond - Drugs of the Future
The Drugs Trade
Drugs of the New World - The Psychoactive Revolution - Tobacco in China,
Tea in Europe - The Opium Wars - The Anti-Opium campaign -
Temperance and Prohibition - The ‘War on Drugs’ - Epilogue: The Decline
of Tobacco
Notes and Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright
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Foreword
The fundamental urge to alter our consciousness in significant but
controllable ways is, it seems, part of our hard-wiring. Very few people live
their lives without using some kind of mind-altering substance, be it a cup
of coffee, a glass of wine, sleeping pills, cigarettes or betel. The abundance
of intoxicants and the myriad ways in which they are woven into the fabric
of cultures around the world have left an extremely rich visual and
material record, which this book explores. Moreover, drugs have
significantly influenced social and cultural movements, defining entire
subcultures from coffeehouses and opium dens to modern-day raves.
Mind-altering substances answer the deep desire – need, even – we have to
enhance and extend our ordinary experience of life.
As a habit, taking drugs seems directly related to our core interest in
experimentation: the indulgence of our inclination to wonder ‘What if?’.
Accordingly, scientific enquiry into this aspect of human experience has
progressively deepened and broadened in modern times. Since the
eighteenth century, the development of new drugs has played out against a
backdrop of pharmacological investigation and application, with
traditional substances derived from plants and herbs augmented and then
supplanted by synthetic chemicals. Though inevitably more subjective, the
actual experience of drug consumption has also become an increasing
focus of enquiry, frequently through self-experiment. Here the approach of
science has gone hand in hand with the practices of art to explore the
impact of drugs on creativity. More recently, in a century when the social
impact of drug consumption has emerged as an ever-more-threatening
‘social menace’, science has also been called upon for guidance in tackling
the problem of addiction.
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A waiter pours a drink for a customer in a painting of an eighteenth-century London coffee house
(detail). (© The Trustees of the British Museum)
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Ceremonial drinking of kava in the Friendly Islands (Tonga), engraving by W. Sharp after John
Webber (detail). (Wellcome Library, London)
A Mandarin sits on a mat, smoking a long opium pipe, in a coloured aquatint by Swiss artist
Sigismond Himely, c. 1820. (Wellcome Library, London)
High Society is an intriguingly multi-layered account of humanity’s
long and elaborate dance with mind-altering drugs. It was written as an
extension of Mike Jay’s advisory and curatorial work on an exhibition of the
same name presented at Wellcome Collection, London. Wellcome
Collection was not conceived as a conventional venue for the
dissemination and popularization of scientific knowledge. Instead its
approach has been to think in public – ‘out loud’, as it were – about
medical science and its connections with art and the rest of life. The
subject of drugs, with its rich history of scientific experimentation, literary
and artistic inspiration, economic opportunity, societally encoded
behaviour and fundamental biological effects, is an ideal focus for an
institution dedicated to investigating science as a vibrant part of culture.
Ken Arnold
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