On 26 Mar 2003, Jean-Marc Perreault wrote: >> A student asked me for one or few references where he could find good info regarding "illicit" drug usage during the Victorian era, and more specifically Freud's usage of Cocaine.<<
Stephen Black replied: >> My guess is that you'll find plenty of good stuff in E.M Thornton's book -_The Freudian Fallacy_ about Freud's use of cocaine. Another handy source is a rather surprising one. It's in the chapter on cocaine in the staid Consumer Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs (E.M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972). ). It's available on-line at: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU35.html Of course we haven't heard from Allen Esterson for a while but if he's still around, perhaps he'll contribute some other, less well-known sources for further contemplation. Yoo-hoo, Allen!<< I can�t help much on the general question of the use of cocaine in the late Victorian era, other than saying that it wasn�t �illicit� at that time. (In the late 1800s Dr Watson was disapproving of Sherlock Holmes�s cocaine habit, but there was no suggestion that it was illegal.) As a result of the occurrence of severe cases of cocaine addiction, its short-lived medical use seems to have rapidly dwindled in Europe in the late 1880s, but not in the United States, where cases of cocaine intoxication continued to be reported into the 1890s and later. (See Thornton�s chapter �The Great Cocaine Epidemic� in *The Freudian Fallacy* [titled *Freud and Cocaine* in the original British edition].) The Consumers Union Report was too early to include important material that has since come to light. At that time only extracts from Freud�s letters to his confidant Wilhelm Fliess had been published, and these excluded all mention of his consumption of cocaine other than in the period in which he was researching the drug in the mid-1880s. We now know that he continued taking the drug for depression, migraine and nasal problems up to 1896, so the period of his (moderate) use was some twelve years. The account of Freud�s friend and colleague von Fleischl, whom in 1885 Freud claimed (without naming him) as a case demonstrating the cure of morphine addiction by the use of cocaine, is more fully reported in *The Freudian Fallacy*. Since that book was published Han Isra�ls had the good fortune to come across a large batch of transcripts of unpublished letters written by Freud to his fiance� Martha Bernays (later his wife), some of which reveal fresh information about Fleischl�s experiences with cocaine. Isra�ls�s account of the Fleischl affair was published in his book *Het Geval Freud* (1993) (for those TIPSters who read Dutch), and is now available in German translation *Der Fall Freud* (1999). An English edition has yet to materialise, but I have a draft of an English translation sent to me by Isra�ls. Freud�s claim in 1884 to have cured Fleischl�s morphine addiction without habituation to cocaine was premature (to put it at its kindest). Two physicians treating Fleischl (for the nerve problem in his hand which led to his taking morphine) were of a different opinion, and less than two months after Fleischl started taking cocaine Freud reported to Martha that he was taking it regularly. By the following year he was taking cocaine in huge quantities (as well as morphine for the excruciating pain in his hand), yet this did not deter Freud from continuing to claim the �cure� without cocaine habituation in papers published in 1885. He even repeated the claim in an 1887 paper, while defending his championing of cocaine in the face of increasing evidence of its adverse effects. In that paper he also falsely claimed to have advocated the consuming of the cocaine by mouth, although in an earlier paper he had recommended the use of injections �without hesitation�. (Jones notes that the paper in which he strongly advocated the use of cocaine by injection for morphine addiction was omitted from the list of publications Freud prepared in 1897 for his application for a professorship.) A brief account of the Fleischl affair can be found in Borch-Jacobsen�s review of *Der Fall Freud* in London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/borc01_.html Isra�ls� hundred page section on cocaine in *Der Fall Freud* also deals with Freud�s cocaine experiments with himself as subject, in relation to which I disagree with the author on some of his conclusions. But that�s another story! Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
