New World go-getters
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both cultivated a relative
of the cannabis plant, as did many farmers in the US's early history.
Hemp was used in medicinal preparations for bronchial conditions,
migraines, menstrual cramps and for treating glaucoma. The plant’s
fibres could also be used to manufacture high quality canvas, rope
and paper. The revolution that started with the dumping of tea in
Boston Harbour also involved a Declaration of Independence written
on Dutch hemp.
It was only with the coming of the Industrial
Revolution, however, that drugs really started to take control.
Thanks to the widespread use of laudanum, a tincture of opium in
alcohol, there were few members of society in the 18th and 19th
centuries who could claim they hadn’t tasted opiates in one
form or another. Used as an early painkiller and pacifier, these
tinctures were very popular for calming painful stomach conditions,
curing toothache and quietening fractious children.
The greatest demand for opium, however,
was in the cotton-spinning districts of northern England. In
Confessions of an English Opium Eater,
Thomas De Qunicey records how in Lancashire ‘on a Saturday
afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewn with pills of
one, two or three grains in preparation for the known demand of
the evening.’ Could everybody really have had toothache?
Well, perhaps so in the 19th century. But one
medical investigator of the period, a certain A Calkin, was moved
to remark that ‘There was not a village in all that region
round but could show at least one shop and its counter loaded with
the little laudanum vials even to the hundreds, for the accommodation
of customers retiring from the workshops on Saturday night.’
As an antidote to the backbreaking toil and mind-numbing
tedium of the mills, laudanum was a cheap alternative to beer and
gin. It also did the job it was supposed to. It deadened pain. According
to Calkin, many of the great industrial towns, including Sheffield,
Birmingham and Nottingham, not to mention the working populations
of Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, were renowned for
their number of opium users.
Read on …
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