The Birth of Heroin and the Dem - Thom Metzger, ebook
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=*=NOTE: * Denotes text in bold, _ denotes text in italics, [: :] denotes blockquote text=*=The Birth of Heroin and the Demonization of the Dope Fiendby Th. Metzger---======---_This book is sold for informational purposes only. Neither the author nor the publisher will be held accountable for the use or misuse of the information contained in this book._*The Birth of Heroin and The Demonization of The Dope Fiend*© 1998 by Th. MetzgerAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in any form whatsoever without the prior written consent of the publisher. Reviews may quote brief passages without the written consent of the publisher as long as proper credit is given.*Published by:*Loompanics UnlimitedPO Box 1197Port Townsend, WA 98368Loompanics Unlimited is a division of Loompanics Enterprises, Inc.1-360-385-2230E-mail:loompanx@olympus.netWeb site: www.loompanics.comCover illustration by Nick Bougas*ISBN 1-55950-177-4Library of Congress Card Catalog 98-65205*---======------Contents---Chapter One: God's Own MedicineChapter Two: The Devil's LaboratoryChapter Three: Virgin BirthChapter Four: DemonizationChapter Five: Descent Into HellChapter Six: The New OrthodoxyChronology---======---[img "p000.gif"]---Chapter One------God's Own Medicine---~1.~God's Own Medicine came to America on the Mayflower, landing with the Pilgrims in 1620.[1] Opium dissolved in wine and scented with saffron, cinnamon and cloves was called laudanum. Opium in tincture form (mixed with licorice, honey, benzoic acid, camphor and anise oil) was known as paregoric. Both of these opiate elixirs were carried ashore soon after the Puritans established their foothold in the New World. And in the almost 400 years that followed, opiates have been a constant presence in American culture: a much-heralded medical necessity and tainted play-toy, profoundly American and at the same time a baleful "foreign influence" corrupting the body politic, both demon seed and God's Own Medicine.The Puritan colonists fled Europe to keep themselves and their children pure; taint-terrors are always about the offspring, the sanctity of the seed. They traveled to the New World to begin again the great work of their God. As courageous as they were ill-tempered, God-and-Satan-haunted, hard-shell, hard-buckle Calvinist warriors, they waded ashore on the ice-crusted "dessart" beach of New England, and with them came an Old World (in fact, Neolithic) presence: the fruit of the opium poppy.It was winter, "sharp and violent... cruel and fierce." The land they came to was a "hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men." Behind them lay 1,000 leagues of pitiless sea. Before them lay "a whole country... wild and savage." In their first winter — calledThe Starving Time — half their number died; diseased, frozen, hungry.[2]However, the colony did survive until spring, and when the Mayflower returned to England, only the mariners, not a single Puritan, went back with it.Among those who survived was a doctor: Samuel Fuller by name. A widower, aged 30 years, a deacon of the church, Dr. Fuller brought with him — along with his surgical fleam for bleeding patients, his clyster syringe, his forceps and bonesaw — a brass and rosewood medicine chest. Roughly cubical when closed up, the chest had a slot for the skeleton key and a brass carrying handle. The top opened, freeing two side portions or wings to swing out. Two drawers slid out from underneath. The chest held 16 vials of medicine. Of coarse green glass, with wide, flanged mouths, these vials held a variety of medical nostrums. Beside emetics for inducing "a smart vomit," Spanish fly caustic (useful for making counterirritant blisters), and chinchona bark extractives, Dr. Fuller had brought to the New World paregoric and laudanum. Other than alcohol, opium was at this time the only item in the _materia medico_, which truly had the power to subdue pain.[3]It took weeks for the Puritans to decide on a place to establish their colony. Scouting parties in a shallop coasted about Cape Cod, spray freezing to their coats in shiny glazes, shadowy Indian forms gliding in and out of sight. When the spot was finally chosen, the belongings of the colonists were ferried in from the Mayflower. At what point the medicine chest — with the vials of opium packed neatly in pine shavings and woolen lint — was brought in is not recorded. But it did land, carried like the Israelite's Ark of the Covenant. Two men waded through the frozen salt surf, up the broken stone shingle, and like the Spaniards who'd placed a flag to claim the new conquest for their sovereign, set the medicine chest down and claimed this spot as theirs. A Bible, of course, preceded the opium, firearms, food and homey furnishings, too, but the opium elixirs did land, and took their place, to rest like a cornerstone on the harsh, barren, New England soil.Though the common image of the Puritans is that of haters of pleasure, bitter opponents of all physical comfort, in fact they brought along with them much alcohol: "strong waters" (gin), aqua vitae (brandy), and beer. Indeed, their thirst for beer — according to their first historian, William Bradford — was a matter of considerable significance early on in the colony's life.[4] Though drunkenness was frowned on, beer was staple in many Puritan homes, fortifying the men in their dawn-to-dusk battles against the wilderness, killing the pain and giving them a taste of the homeland they'd fled forever.Laudanum and paregoric did not come to the New World as agents of idle pleasure, however. They were brought along to alleviate physical suffering. The complex interplay of pain and pleasure is one of the deepest currents in the story of opiates in the U.S. Americans are deeply conflicted about pain and pleasure; both are valued, and at the same time neither is embraced wholeheartedly. Certainly the Puritans made the notions of reward and suffering a significant element in their world-view. One hundred and two warriors of purity, minions of a fierce and relentless deity, the Puritans ground their moral axes to a silvery sheen on the rough stone of New England's coast. They saw their travails in apocalyptic terms:[:When god is about to turn the earth into Paradise, he does not begin his work where there is some good growth already, but in a wilderness, where nothing grows, and nothing is to be seen but dry sand and barren rock, that the light may shine out of the darkness.[5]:]And it was indeed a war of light against darkness that the Puritans set out to win. The climate, the land itself, the flora, were all perceived in demonic terms. The native inhabitants were doubly so: the archetypal dark-skinned Others who would be eradicated by muskets and torches if God didn't rout them out first with pestilence.If the Puritan sojourn in the New World was part of God's plan, then the Indians were not bit players but important antagonists. Early in their invasion of the Americas, Europeans conceived of the native inhabitants as symbols, mythic figures. They were paradoxically both base flesh and enemies in a cosmic spiritual war. On one hand, Cotton Mather described them as "rattle-snakes" and "barbarians." On the other, they were "people of the Devil," and "infidels." Their lord and master was unquestionably Satan, who Mather calls in _Wonders of the Invisible World_ a "small black man."One of the first captivity narratives ever published is that of Mary Rowlandson. In it, she describes her Indian captors as "atheistical, proud, wild, cruel, barbarous, brutish, (in one word) diabolical."[6] Robert Berkhofer has done an excellent job of tracing the evolution of the European concept of "Indian." One of his most important points is that the white man reconceived the 2,000+ ethnic groups in the New World as a monolithic culture, sharing a set of sinister characteristics:[:Nakedness and lechery, passion and vanity led to lives of polygamy and sexual promiscuity among themselves and constant warfare and fiendish revenge against their enemies. When habits and customs were not brutal they appeared loathsome to Whites. Cannibalism and human sacrifice were the worst sins, but cruelty to captives and incessant warfare ranked not far behind in the estimation of Whites. Filthy surroundings... indolence rather than industry, improvidence in the face of scarcity, thievery and treachery... superstition represented by the "conjurers" and "medicine men," the hard slavery of women and laziness of men.[7]:]This list might as easily describe the early 20th century Dope Fiend as it does the 17th century "Indian." The heathen — whether native American, Chinese, Black, or more nebulously alien — continues to haunt the American soul. The dark dopple-ganger, tainted by ill-defined sin, only quasi-human, would emerge again and again to plague and torment pure, white America. Usually this malign specter was in league with some devil, or was the devil himself. It's crucial, in order to understand the development of the Dope Fiend, to start at the beginning. The Puritan's world-view echoes to the present day. And their concept of the demonic, dark-skinned Other (the "small black man" with his legion of hell-born followers) has appeared again and again, usually in times of cultural chaos or external threat. The Dope Fiend is as much a mythic figure as an actual social phenomenon. His roots reach back to the very first day opium landed in the New World.~2.~Though the Puritans died out as a cohesive denomination, they nonetheless lived on. Their descendants, their morality, their obsessional combative world-view spread westward across the...
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