New in paperback, Mike Jay's global history of intoxication looks at the earliest archaeological evidence of drug use, the botanicals of the classical world, the mind-bending self-experiments of early scientists and today's 'war on drugs'. Every society is a high society. Every day, people drink coffee on European terraces, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, take coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth. This striking and lyrical book, beautifully illustrated with rarely seen paintings, photographs and engravings from the Wellcome Collection, explores the international spectrum of drug use in cultures throughout the modern world: medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols and coveted trade goods. 'Fascinating and highly recommended' - Psychedelic Press 'Straightforward and engaging storytelling and cool headed analysis of use of, and attitudes towards, mind-altering drugs ... deserves high praise for rendering a complex, controversial topic with clarity and elegance. It's also good looking ... quite marvellous' - British Medical Journal
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'Fascinating and highly recommended' - Psychedelic News 'Straightforward and engaging storytelling and cool headed analysis of use of, and attitudes towards, mind-altering drugs ... deserves high praise for rendering a complex, controversial topic with clarity and elegance. It's also good looking ... quite marvellous' - British Medical Journal
Sprache
Verlagsort
Illustrationen
15 Illustrations, black and white; 142 Illustrations, color
Maße
Höhe: 240 mm
Breite: 170 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-500-28910-5 (9780500289105)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Mike Jay has written widely on the cultural history of science, medicine and the mind. His books include The Influencing Machine, The Story of James Tilly Matthews and his Confinement in Eighteenth-century Bedlam and High Society: Mind-altering Drugs in History and Culture. He reviews regularly for The London Review of Books and The Wall Street Journal. This Way Madness Lies was written in conjunction with the exhibition 'Bedlam: the asylum and beyond', which he co-curated for the Wellcome Collection in London. He is a research affiliate of the Health Humanities Centre at University College London and a trustee of the Bethlem Art and History Collection.
CONTENTS 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
