by Lucy Inglis
In contrast to the horrendous damage effected by the Gin Craze, opium and its derivatives kept a low profile in the same decades. By now an accepted medicine, widely available in larger cities, there is little commentary. In an examination of the records of the Old Bailey, opium and laudanum appear as poisons deployed in killings or robbery, but in fewer than a dozen cases in the years of the craze. In two cases the perpetrator was also the user. One regards a robbery committed on the EIC premises, by a former employee and clearly hardened taker of opium, Thomas Abram, who attempted to get away with stealing 1,100 guineas and various property. When questioned as to why he committed the crime, Abram pleaded that he was unsound of mind, and called his doctor and apothecary to testify to the fact. When Dr Cromp was asked how much opium his patient took when he was ‘under an Indisposition of the mind’, the doctor ‘reply’d, more than he would have him or any other Person take, for it might do him an Injury.’41 The other regards a highway robbery committed ‘in a common road near Hackney’ by a Richard Montgomery, who after the robbery went with an accomplice for dinner, before pushing up the sash window and ‘would have got out at the Window, saying, that he must go and fight the Indians’ and after this ‘he said he would take some Opium, for he had a Mind to take a Journey to the other World’. Montgomery’s lawyer confessed that ‘Lunacy had ran in the Blood of the Family . . . To corroborate this Mr Collier Sen. (altho’ the Prosecutor) was so generous as to confess, that his Wife coming to understand what Family he is of (for Montgomery is a fictitious Name) she knew several of them to be weak in their Intellectuals . . . The Jury brought in their Verdict that he was Non compos mentis.’42
Thus, opiates accounted for an insignificant proportion of the cases presented to the Old Bailey, rather than the 1.5 per cent of all cases involving ‘drunkenness’ in the same years. The Gin Craze reached a peak in 1751, when William Hogarth issued his famous Beer Street and Gin Lane prints, showing the contrast between a happy state of consumption amongst the clean and robust citizens of the former and the ruined hags and inebriates of the latter. The Gin Act of the same year raised prices sufficiently to curtail demand, and attempted to eliminate small drinking shops. But consumption had reached so high a level that it was unlikely that this was sufficient in itself. A combination of changes in society, as well as the influence of reformers, contributed to the end of what was a calamitous localized episode of alcoholism. Ultimately, the trigger for the Gin Craze is obvious, with the passing of the 1689 Act, but reasons for the end of it are unclear. These bouts of collective addiction have struck societies across the world periodically, but, like plague, they eventually lessen and then abate for reasons that remain essentially unknown. The feverish ‘itch of gambling’ seen amongst the British aristocracy of the late eighteenth century is an example in microcosm.
From the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, there had been attempts, in poetry and sermons, to vocalize what it was to be dependent upon a substance, namely alcohol, and to understand addiction. It was, however, the Gin Craze that was the very beginning of a willingness across society to understand what lay at the heart of alcoholism, and thus all addictions. From Henry Fielding, who believed firmly that it was, as often as not, the drink and not the drinker who was guilty of the crime, to certain members of the government, to campaigning aristocrats and artists, there was a movement towards addressing the needs of those brought to the most desperate of circumstances by what was still termed ‘intoxication’.
From The Anatomy of Melancholy to the new Empiricism: Opium Under the Eighteenth-Century Microscope
The years of the Gin Craze saw a change not only in the attitude to intoxication, but to sensibility in general. What, in the seventeenth century, had been regarded as pertaining to the physical senses was increasingly coming to mean a sensitivity to the world at large. Robert Burton (1577–1640) was an Oxford scholar who wrote the first work to address problems with mental health directly, in 1621. The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it was revelatory in its time, and influential for the following century and a half. Burton wrote from a personal perspective (albeit under a pseudonym), ‘I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy’, and in his view there was, ‘no greater cause of melancholy than idleness’.43 The work is wide-ranging, and combines a medical textbook with a philosophical treatise, touching on many aspects of what are now primary concerns of modern mental health. His writing on insomnia and its attendant ‘continuall cares, fears, sorrows’ struck a chord and his words are referenced throughout the coming years by many other writers. He insists it must be ‘speedily helped, and sleep by all means procured, which sometimes is a sufficient remedy of itself, without any other Physick’. For this he recommends the basics of ‘Poppy’, as well as ‘mandrake, henbane and hempseed’ or more complicated medicines he refers to as ‘opiats’. What follows are extensive instructions on how to take these concoctions, what foods to eat, even how to lie in bed, in a fashion that ‘may procure sleep to the most melancholy man in the world’.44
Burton’s book is long-winded and repetitive, but there are enough sharply drawn observations on the state of what is now known as clinical depression for it to have been the most influential work on mental health for readers and writers in the next two centuries. It’s also apparent from the complicated recipes for his cures that, even by the time he was writing, many people were in a state of almost constant self-medication, whether it be the sleepless rural poor with their boiled hempseed posset, or the gentleman in his chambers applying leeches and opium behind his ears. The direct link between mental health, mental distress and opiate use is implicit in Burton’s work, and The Anatomy of Melancholy became a standard text for such gentlemen in the eighteenth century, as the Enlightenment began. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), one of the most gifted Englishmen of his time – and a man who struggled throughout his life with depression, as well as alcoholism – said it ‘was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise’.45
By the time Johnson was reading Burton, Europe had changed significantly. Borders had realigned. The Ottoman and Mughal empires were on the wane, and the Safavids were finished. Constant and inconclusive wars had exhausted all their resources, and devastated the borderlands. European trade with Iran, Egypt and Syria dwindled away, but increased significantly with Istanbul and the Balkans. Although the white Egyptian Theban opium remained the pinnacle, Turkish opium, rather than Persian, became Britain’s main supply, imported in ‘flat pieces or cakes; covered with leaves, [in] which are frequently small capsules of [dockweed]. It has a peculiar, heavy, strong odour, and a bitter, nauseous taste, attended with some acrimony when long-chewed. Its colour is reddish-brown or fawn-like.’46
This Turkish opium, and even basics such as China tea and coffee from Yemen, were freely available and the new way of life for many. By the middle of the century, not only had consumption become more sophisticated, intellectual life had assumed a new importance. Philosophers such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were writing works on tolerance and citizenship that were widely disseminated. Science had moved firmly towards empirical rationalism. And in 1753 the exceptional Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus classified the opium poppy into the genus and species Papaver somniferum, and counted the seeds in one head with a pin to find over 32,000. The classification system Linnaeus devised, now known as binomial nomenclature, revolutionized natural science in the latter part of the century and forced scientists across all disciplines to organize themselves on a similar model, far superior to the personal and idiosyncratic methods used before.
Opium, through the old manuals, apothecary shops, and increasingly, through laudanum, paregoric and Dover’s powder, had found itself a place in almost every home. The government preoccupation with distilled spirits and the disaster of the Gin Craze meant that few were looking at the faithful medicinal standby. Then, in an age of publishing an
d pamphleteering, a few dissenting voices began to emerge, and over the course of the eighteenth century a series of works on opium appeared that demonstrated changing attitudes to the drug amongst the medical community. Many of these were by men working or educated at Edinburgh University, which produced some of the foremost medical minds in the world in the latter part of the century.
First, though, Welsh doctor John Jones wrote a tract on The Mysteries of Opium Reveal’d (1700). His observations on the effects of opium were clear and accurate, and also show how far poppy cultivation had spread: his preference was for Egyptian opium owing to its proximity to the equator, reasoning that it is stronger from there because of the heat, and better than if it is ‘made’ in England or Germany. Even that made ‘in the Languedoc, which borders upon the Mediterranean’ was stronger.47 His notes on the effects of long-term use, all the symptoms ‘observable in old Drunkards’, show the dangers of opiate abuse but the tone is without judgement, and he views opium overall in a positive light. His observations on the operation of opium on the senses are some of the first to include the feeling of transportation, a dreamlike removal from the ordinary world that shows an intimate familiarity with the mental effects of the drug: ‘thus the Sound of a Pin’s Head, falling into a Brass Cauldron, is heard at some distance’, like ‘Guns, Bells &c., are better and farther heard along hollow Valleys, than upon Plains’.48
The book ends, somewhat bizarrely, with a final chapter on the external uses of opium, which concludes with the terse advice that it can ‘excite to Venery by its titillating Volatile Salt, if applied to the Perineum’, followed by a prayer dedicated to William Harvey’s discovery of the circulatory system.49
In contrast to the useful but eccentric advice of writers such as Jones, after the Gin Craze, texts begin to appear warning of the dangers of opium. In 1742, the year of Dover’s death, Charles Alston, a professor of botany and materia medica in Edinburgh, produced a paper, A Dissertation on Opium, the first pharmacological study of opium, some of it conducted on poppies he grew himself. He was convinced that opium worked on the nerves, not by ‘rarefying’ the blood, although he wouldn’t be proved right for another century.
George Young (1692–1757), a surgeon and doctor also working in Edinburgh, published in 1753 a treatise on opiates in which he warned, ‘Everybody knows a large dose of laudanum will kill, so need not be cautioned on that head; but there are few who consider it a slow poison, though it certainly is so.’50 Young, strangely, was against giving opiates in cases of extreme pain, such as kidney stones, for which it is doubtful his patients thanked him, but he wrote sensibly on the need to moderate opiate intake, and tested extensively on himself. His work with pregnant women and children was also the clearest to date. On morning sickness, he dismissed the idea of humours and attributed it instead to ‘some change in the uterus, which we cannot explain: yet it is a change which, by sympathy, seems to affect the whole nervous system’.51 He recommended the use of laudanum in childbirth, although only enough to alleviate pain and not to suppress the mother. For weaning children, he recommended it in small doses, and not as an antidote to being ‘crammed every day by their fond mothers with a variety of jellies, sweet-meats and preserves’.52
A decade later, in 1763, John Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital in south-east London, published a small book on ‘the Effects of Opium considered as a Poison’. Opium as a poison was clearly nothing new: from ancient times to the records of the Old Bailey, people had used opium and subsequently laudanum to either drug or poison their victims, but Awsiter’s first line declares, ‘Gentlemen, I was Induced to Write this Essay from a Desire of throwing a Light upon a Subject, hitherto but triflingly, and at best, obscurely treated.’53
The apothecary was in no doubt that opium was ‘first introduced to dissipate Anxieties, Pains and Perturbations of the Mind, which appears not unlike the Effects of Intoxicating Drinks, so requested in Europe’. He asserts that opium is not in ‘common use’ in England, but that nor should it be, for familiarity with the drug would remove ‘the Necessary Fear and Caution, which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this Drug; for there are many Properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the Use, and make it more in request with us that with the Turks themselves, the Result of which Knowledge must prove a general Misfortune’.54 However, he then goes on to describe the successful treatment of enough overdoses to indicate that opiate abuse was rather more widespread than he originally indicated, and includes purges, emetics, and keeping the patient awake and mobile. After treating an eighteen-month-old girl for an overdose, Awsiter also warns against nurseries whose practice it is to give their charges syrup of poppy such as ‘Godfrey’s Cordial, which is a Composition very binding, has Opium in it, and was never designed by the Author for such Purposes’.55 Godfrey’s Cordial became one of the most popular proprietary medicines in America by the end of the eighteenth century and was in use worldwide until the 1970s.
Awsiter’s modest book of cautionary tales reveals the extent of knowledge about opiate overdose amongst London’s medical professionals; until recently, the immediate treatment for overdose was little different. The book is valuable, though, for its practical knowledge, clearly acquired by personal experience and expressed in a useful and thorough fashion. This spirit of empiricism pervaded the latter part of the eighteenth century as the Enlightenment progressed and intellectual horizons broadened.
John Leigh (1755–96) was an American doctor from Virginia working in Edinburgh when, in 1785, he produced a groundbreaking paper on opium, which he dedicated to George Washington. It won Edinburgh University’s Harveian Prize and was published to acclaim the following year. ‘No writer,’ he says of opium’s obscure origins, ‘has yet offered to the world any satisfactory account of the manner in which this valuable remedy, or its virtues, were first discovered; hence the imaginations of many have been busily set to work, and a variety of fruitless conjectures brought forth to fill up this historical charm.’56 Of his many experiments – upon volunteers, animals and himself – he made minute observations under early laboratory conditions, often using the ‘common crude opium of the shops’ of Edinburgh, estimated to be only one third as strong as that available from the London Dispensary, which Leigh preferred for all his recipes. In one experiment, he extracted opium ‘essential oil’ and ‘prevailed’ upon a healthy man to take fifteen drops of it, ‘with some difficulty’, but it ‘brought on such a vomiting as deterred me from making further experiments of this nature’.57 This did not deter him, however, from other experiments, such as the time he ‘threw a quantity of my strong solution into the rectum of a rabbit’, and ‘into the vagina’ of a dog, and dosed young teenagers to test their tolerance. He does at least admit that he designed these experiments to be ‘free from artificial gloss’.58
Edinburgh’s influence on European medicine during this time was remarkable, although some of it somewhat less fact-based than Leigh’s empiricism. A contemporary of Leigh’s, Dr John Brown, devised the Brunonian System of health, based on stimuli: all disease was caused by over- or under-stimulation. Emetics and purges were needed for those in an excited state, and opium and hearty meals for those in a state of lethargy. Verging on outright quackery, the Brunonian System was hugely popular in Germany and Italy, and proved influential for a few decades until it was finally discredited.
Samuel Crumpe, an Irish physician working in Limerick who had studied with Leigh in Edinburgh, was rather more sensible in his outlook. In his 1793 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Properties of Opium, he begins ‘It appears rather singular, that almost every circumstance relating to this remarkable medicine has been the subject of dispute . . . Late experience, however, seems to have so far ascertained the manner of its production and preparation, as to remove every difference on these points.’59 This was broadly true, and not least because of the efforts of men like Crumpe, who injected an opiate solution into his skin, eye and penis, and also grou
nd some to powder so he could snort it. His overall observations of this were ‘heat and pain’, followed by numbness, and he concluded that opium was of no use in the treatment of gonorrhea. Crumpe’s calm descriptions of scraping the skin from his wrist, examining his eyes and urethra, and his tendency to sneeze after inhaling are admirable in their restraint, as, unfortunately, is his description of ‘laying bare the thorax of a dog which had just been hanged’ so that he might apply opium ‘milk’ directly to the pericardium of its heart. It revived the heart ‘for about a minute’. He conducted further experiments on dogs, rabbits and frogs, and gives comprehensive descriptions of not only withdrawal symptoms, but how to treat diseases from smallpox to rheumatism with opiates, and relates how he treated a woman during a miscarriage. On ‘Mania’, he observes, ‘I fear our knowledge of the pathology of this disease is so limited, that the practice must be, for the most part, empirical.’60
Both talented writers and scientists, Leigh’s and Crumpe’s works on opiates are the most accurate and useful of any that had gone before. Leigh returned to America in 1786, married and became a notable if not distinguished manager of a lottery, before dying at forty. Crumpe died suddenly aged twenty-nine, having won the prize of the Royal Irish Academy for his work on employment and the economy in Ireland. These significant losses to the scientific community were no doubt much to the relief of Edinburgh’s and Limerick’s dogs, rabbits and frogs.