Drugging France

In the nineteenth century, drug consumption permeated French society to produce a new norm: the chemical enhancement of modern life. French citizens empowered themselves by seeking pharmaceutical relief for their suffering and engaging in self-medication. Doctors and pharmacists, meanwhile, fashioned themselves as gatekeepers to these potent drugs, claiming that their expertise could shield the public from accidental harm. Despite these efforts, the unanticipated phenomenon of addiction laid bare both the embodied nature of the modern self and the inherent instability of the notions of individual free will and responsibility.Drugging France explores the history of mind-altering drugs in medical practice between 1840 and 1920, highlighting the intricate medical histories of opium, morphine, ether, chloroform, cocaine, and hashish. While most drug histories focus on how drugs became regulated and criminalized as dangerous addictive substances, Sara Black instead traces the spread of these drugs through French society, demonstrating how new therapeutic norms and practices of drug consumption transformed the lives of French citizens as they came to expect and even demand pharmaceutical solutions to their pain. Through self-experimentation, doctors developed new knowledge about these drugs, transforming exotic botanical substances and unpredictable chemicals into reliable pharmaceutical commodities that would act on the mind and body to modify pain, sensation, and consciousness.From the pharmacy counter to the boudoir, from the courtroom to the operating theatre, from the battlefield to the birthing chamber, Drugging France explores how everyday encounters with drugs reconfigured how people experienced their own minds and bodies.

“Highly accessible and enjoyable to read, Drugging France is pathbreaking not only for the historical literature on France, but for the entire field of drug history.” Howard Padwa, UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, “This fascinating work is an important contribution to the understanding of the practices of care, pleasure, and experimentation made possible by psychotropic drugs in the nineteenth century. Sara Black considerably enriches a historiography that has until now been too concentrated on the phenomenon of addiction, by showing how much the use of psychotropic drugs was in fact anchored in the practices of the French, and by extension of Westerners, in a complex and varied set of consumptions.” H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews

Sara E. Black is assistant professor of history at Christopher Newport University.