Drugging France: Mind-Altering Medicine in the Long Nineteenth Century (Volume 5) (Intoxicating Histories)

Drugging France: Mind-Altering Medicine in the Long Nineteenth Century (Volume 5) (Intoxicating Histories)

In the nineteenth century, drug consumption permeated French society to produce a new norm: the chemical enhancement of modern life. French citizens empowered themselves by seeking pharmaceutical relief for their suffering and engaging in self-medication. Doctors and pharmacists, meanwhile, fashioned themselves as gatekeepers to these potent drugs, claiming that their expertise could shield the public from accidental harm. Despite these efforts, the unanticipated phenomenon of addiction laid bare both the embodied nature of the modern self and the inherent instability of the notions of individual free will and responsibility. Drugging France explores the history of mind-altering drugs in medical practice between 1840 and 1920, highlighting the intricate medical histories of opium, morphine, ether, chloroform, cocaine, and hashish. While most drug histories focus on how drugs became regulated and criminalized as dangerous addictive substances, Sara Black instead traces the spread of these drugs through French society, demonstrating how new therapeutic norms and practices of drug consumption transformed the lives of French citizens as they came to expect and even demand pharmaceutical solutions to their pain. Through self-experimentation, doctors developed new knowledge about these drugs, transforming exotic botanical substances and unpredictable chemicals into reliable pharmaceutical commodities that would act on the mind and body to modify pain, sensation, and consciousness. From the pharmacy counter to the boudoir, from the courtroom to the operating theatre, from the battlefield to the birthing chamber, Drugging France explores how everyday encounters with drugs reconfigured how people experienced their own minds and bodies. "A meticulously researched and vividly detailed analysis of the impact of war on the landscape and society of the battlefields of the Western Front in France and Belgium. Connelly’s study provides valuable insights into the motivations and significance of visiting battlefields and the first mass tourism to former sites of war and violence, as well as the emergence of a whole new industry." Francia-Recensio “This fascinating work is an important contribution to the understanding of the practices of care, pleasure, and experimentation made possible by psychotropic drugs in the nineteenth century. Sara Black considerably enriches a historiography that has until now been too concentrated on the phenomenon of addiction, by showing how much the use of psychotropic drugs was in fact anchored in the practices of the French, and by extension of Westerners, in a complex and varied set of consumptions.” H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews “Highly accessible and enjoyable to read, Drugging France is pathbreaking not only for the historical literature on France, but for the entire field of drug history.” Howard Padwa, UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs “Far more than a medical history of psychotropic drugs, Drugging France presents a detailed cultural and social history of pain and pain relief.” Rod Phillips, Carleton University and author of French Wine: A History "Black relies on a wide variety of sources, ranging from medical treatises and obscure dissertations to asylum records and archives, court records, and the work of social reformers who sought to preserve the quantity and quality of the French in the face of racial degeneration. A particular strength of the work is its use of colorful, illustrative examples. Drugging France is a necessary reading for those interested in French history and the history of drugs and medicine in the nineteenth century." Journal of Modern History How medicine normalized the consumption of mind-altering drugs and the chemical enhancement of modern life. Series Editors: Virginia Berridge, Erika Dyck Whether on the street, off the shelf, or over the pharmacy counter, interactions with drugs and alcohol are shaped by contested ideas about addiction, healing, pleasure, and vice and their social dimensions. Books in this series explore how people around the world have consumed, created, traded, and regulated psychoactive substances throughout history. The series connects research on legal and illegal drugs and alcohol with diverse areas of historical inquiry, including the histories of medicine, pharmacy, consumption, trade, law, social policy, and popular culture. Its reach is global and includes scholarship on all periods. Intoxicating Histories aims to link these different pasts as well as to inform the present by providing a firmer grasp on contemporary debates and policy issues. We welcome books, whether scholarly monographs or shorter texts for a broad audience focusing on a particular phenomenon or substance, that alter the state of knowledge. Sara E. Black is assistant professor of history at Christopher Newport University.