Narcotic Culture
A History of Drugs in China
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Conventions
1. Introduction
2. The Global Spread of Psychoactive Substances (c. 1600-1900)
3. Opium before the ’Opium War’ (c. 1600-1840)
4. Opium for the People: Status, Space and Consumption (c. 1840-1940)
5. ’The Best Possible and Sure Shield’: Opium, Disease and Epidemics (c. 1840-1940)
6. War on Drugs: Prohibition and the Rise of Narcophobia (c. 1880-1940)
7. Curing the Addict: Prohibition and Detoxification
8. Pills and Powders: The Spread of Semi-Synthetic Opiates (c. 1900-1940)
9. Needle Lore: The Syringe in China (c. 1890-1950)
10. China’s Other Drugs (c. 1900-1950)
11. Conclusion
Bibliography
Character List
Index
Skillfully deploying historical and medical evidence, Narcotic Culture stands all this on its head. The British and their mercantile allies may actually have done the Chinese a favour. In an age when modern medicines were unavailable, opium became a near-universal, inexpensive panacea against the symptoms of dysentery, cholera, malaria and other endemic diseases. . . . Narcotic Culture teases out the complex relationship between tolerance and suppression. It needs to be read far outside the community of Sinologists whence it has emanated."
Asian Studies: East Asia | General Asian Studies
History: Asian History | General History
Sociology: General Sociology | Social History
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