alcohol andof used other items. primarily a male problem, while thousands of women were addicted to laudanum. the panel looks at how these addictions were perceived across race and social class. this discussion was part of the society for historians at the early american republic conference. it is about an hour and a half. >> thank you. welcome, and thank you for coming to the roundtable, with the unwieldy and yet highly evocative title -- drugs, alcohol, and the gendered and racial experience of addiction in the early republic. i am carolyn eastman, and i'm pleased to inform you that the subject of this roundtable proved evocative enough that c-span is filming us right now. a fact that gives me an additional opportunity to remind

my excellent panelists that they should be recruiting their time it. i was working on a book about a celebrity or writer of the very earliest 19th century, who among other cultural qualities, suffered from addiction to opium. sidebar, he blamed it all on his many years of school teaching in virginia, which i think we can all appreciate that. he wrote that there is a disheartening and monotonous drudgery in teaching that silently but fatally saps his constitution, big numbs his faculties, and converts the fuel of enthusiasm into melancholy. opium was the solution, and who

can disagree? in writing about his laudanum habit i found it necessary to rethink my own ideas about addiction. he and his contemporaries spoke of opium as his demon, acknowledging its addictive qualities, they also tended to say that his real problem was melancholy itself. since the publication of the alcohol at republic in 1979, scholars have explored the extent to which 19th century americans wrestled with addictive substances like rum, whiskey, lot number, and smoking opium -- laudanum and smoking opium. early americans experience addiction in surprising ways. experiences that help us

eliminate knew he -- new views of the politics of gender and race during those years. featuring a range of experts, this roundtable will seek to spur new thinking about the gendered and racial experience of addiction. the five people on this panel are presently suited to director car station. we will follow an order as appeared on the program. first we will have bill ror abaugh, whose first book was field the finding. he has written in many areas, the long history of craft a partnership, as well as several aspects of 1960's, including 1960 election between kennedy and nixon, the hippie counterculture, and berkeley's free speech in antiwar movement. perhaps inspired by the fact that he attended berkley. he is the recipient of numerous grants, and despite having moved away from the early republic, he has remained dedicated and is served in many capacities. second, we will have elizabeth kelly gray. she received her phd at williams and mary, and her forthcoming book on drug addiction in

america delves in her previous excellent articles in many journals. her research has been enhanced by grants and fellowships by many institutions. third, we will have matthew warner osborn of university of missouri, kansas city. his book on alcoholic insanity in the early american public -- republic has just appeared from the university of chicago press, and i assume it is downstairs in the book exhibits. you will likely also know his work from his journal of the

early republic article, and his prize-winning essay in the journal -- the social history of medicine. despite earning his phd in uc davis, being here in philly is clearly a homecoming. he's been -- he spent 2004 in judaism five here -- and 2005 here. fourth, thomas augst. his book was a finalist for the himalayas first book rise in 2004. -- book prize in judaism for. he is currently completing a monograph on john goff. reformed drunkard. entitled, a drunkard's story. he received a highly coveted fellowship. finally, diana ahmad, who teaches at missouri university

of science and technology, where she has just been promoted to full professor. not that any of us should be surprised, but that by my count, since 2001, she has received 15 prizes for outstanding teaching. in 2011, she was named the missouri university of science and technology woman of the year. she has been widely about the applications of smoking opium, from china to the american west emma and the racial politics that ensued. essays that culminated in a book and she is currently developing new manuscripts. i have asked each speaker to restrict their comments to about 10 to 12 minutes so that we might have conversation afterwards. without further ado, bill rorab

augh. >> my extra cheese -- my expertise concerns printing. i will discuss alcohol and drugs. most alcohol was consumed by white men. one statistician carefully casually that men consumed 83% of alcohol. this is an early republic statistic, and should therefore not be taken literally. one could accuse the compiler of ignoring female drinking, because female drinking did not

take place in public view. even though that is true, male drinking per capita certainly greatly exceeded female printing. male drink and commonly took place in a public setting. taverns, court settings, political rallies, liquor breaks at work, or during business deals. women were not present in most of these occasions. indeed, the only unaccompanied women who drank and taverns were presumed to be prostitutes. women did drink at home, but that was out of public view, and through little comment. because women were in charge of the home medicine chest, they were most likely to drink for medicinal reasons. later on, in the late 19th century, we know that large numbers of the women's christian temperance union went to their meetings carrying bottles of lidia pinkham's elixir for female complaint, which was 30% alcohol. taking one's medicine was not the same as getting drunk in a bar, and then having a barroom fight. anthropologists who have studied alcohol consumption cross culturally have found it that in most societies, no consumption exceeds female consumption. in a few societies, consumption is about even, but in no society, as any anthropologist

ever found female consumption exceeding male consumption. one major reason the male drink more is that men are generally larger in size than women. the way alcohol affects the body depends very much on size. a small person, in terms of body weight, who takes two drinks, has the same blood alcohol content as a large person who takes three drinks. the amount of alcohol needed to be buzzed is in large measure a function of size. there are also cultural factors that help explain the commonly found male-female differential in alcohol use. from the logically, alcohol is if this inhibitor. -- a disinhibitor. people do things while drunk they would never do well sober. you can talk any undergraduate about this. alcohol promotes male adventurism and risk-taking, and women are less inclined to engage in risky behavior. alcohol also makes people feel more powerful. the sense of power is a substitute for holding real

power. women often bond with other women in all-female groups, a group may achieve a certain amount of power that way. but in a rural and crude society like that of the early republic, where mail it would -- where male physical prowess was prize, male power was obvious. weather was gentle and -- ordinary men and engaging in barroom brawls, or candidates standing for election, it altered lace in the early republic. recall how foreigners were fascinated by americans of 1830's who pretended to be kernels or majors, there were no privates. some were real most titles, many were titles to bestow privilege. dragging was a way to attain power. -- drinking was a way to attain power, or at least the illusion of power.

until one had sobered up. heavy drinking was part of the male only power sinking world. no wonder so much business was conducted over bottles. one major way that alcohol has been used in many societies, including the early republic, was for men to get women drunk. as a small bodied woman crumpled at the drunkenness, the large bodied man having had its enough to drink to feel powerful, could guide her in the pathway that he wanted. women began pliable to male desires. one suspect that the temperance movement was provoked by this, male practice. temperance practice -- temperance movements linked drinking to prostitution, saying it was more about male

misbehavior. they use female virtue to curtail male drinking, and all the vices. primary sources site native american drinking, and men and women were both involved. the public drunkenness of native american women shocked white women. native american drinking happens differently across tribes. tribes like the hopi appeared to have taken to alcohol with fewer dire confidences. in many tribes, a kind of deep alteration resulted in massively destructive drinking. a few indians were observed breaking themselves to death. -- drinking themselves to death. while celebratory slave

drunkenness was common during the holiday weeks between christmas and new year's on plantations, most sources agree that slaves did very little drinking. slaves owning alcohol was illegal. they tolerated holiday sprees, manufactured or purchased. alcohol use was a cultural inheritance from european use. continentst drinking in the world is europe. the ni aaa produced a study of contemporary drinking habits

recorded by race. this report can be found along with a lot of excellent historical data, including statistics on niaa.gov website. and i highly recommend it. consumption peaked in the late 1820's or early 1830's. under the influence of the even telik movement, use declined sharply. the middle classes limited or ended use, except in large city like new york or philadelphia, which matthew osborn takes up in his excellent, new book. consumption has regularly oscillated in cycles. based on cirrhosis of the liver data, we know that alcohol consumption dropped about in half during prohibition. but it did not recover its pre-prohibition peak until about world war ii. one reason was the poverty of the 1930's, people didn't have enough money to buy a drink. enough money to buy a drink. another was that the entire generation that grew up around 1900 could not take its first

legal drink until around age 30, and many of them never had a drink. the world war ii generation was heartbreaking both during and after the war, and the baby boomers continued on this path, although they preferred wine and hard liquor. alcohol consumption peaked around 1973. when it was still only one third personlevel per achieved in 1922. the dragging age was raised in the 80's, sellers were made responsible for slowing to drunks, underage drivers were suggested to zero-tolerance. the designated driver was promoted. the blood limit was lowered to .08. restaurant bar sales dropped. 40% from the early 1970's to the 2000's. overall consumption dropped about 30% per person changing

demographics played a role in this change. overall, the aging of the population cut consumption. it declined with each decade of life, and by age 65, half of americans are abstainers, often on doctor's orders. immigration also played a role in falling consumption. the united states is no longer attracting immigrants from europe, with its hard drinking cultures. instead, immigrants come from asia and latin america, both parts of the world where alcohol consumption is low. people who have that gene in the family are unlikely to drink. even in parts of asia where the gene is rare, consumption is low. mexican-american men drink about the same amount as their anglo peers in their 20's, but after they get married, the drink much

less. mexican american women often do not drink at all. more than half are teetotalers. in mexican culture, a woman who drinks is considered promiscuous. states that used to rank in the heaviest drinking states, are now among the lowest consuming states. african-americans continue to be light consumers of alcohol. black men drink less than men in other groups. and more than half of black women do not drink at all. american indians, like american whites, remain the heaviest consumers. [laughter] i will stop there. >> i will begin with a story american indians, like american whites, remain the heaviest consumers. about a doctor in 1800, he sent a letter to his brother-in-law, who at that time was serving as

a minister to the court of st. james. in the letter, he shared an update about a relative of theirs. he reported that she is restored to a state that enables her to pay some attention to her family. but she lives still on opium, and cannot pass a day without it. this woman would have been a typical habitual user of drugs in the early republic am a petition was white and female, and also because she was well-to-do. why was the democratic bash demographic the most likely to become addicted? i will speak about opiate addiction in the early republic, and first i will speak a little bit about what opiates are, what they were. opium comes from the poppy plant, it was the most widely used medicine in early america. it didn't cure very much, its main value was as a painkiller he reported that she is restored to a state that enables her to and for its ability -- it worked as a sleeping pill. it was often taken as laudanum, which is opium dissolved in alcohol. in 1803, a german pharmacists isolated morphing, which is an alkaloid of opium.

this enabled the doctor to give a much more precise dose of the drug. it was widely used later in the century. another opiate, which is beyond the scope of this conference, is heroin, which is a semisynthetic opiate developed later in the century. some americans did become dependent on laudanum, or opium. the main way in which this happened was because they were prescribed by a doctor. then they would either be unable to quit, or they would realize that it was bringing benefits beyond the super effect once, -- the ability to allay pain. many people were introduced to the drug to reduce anxiety. evidence of the habitual use of opiates at this time is largely relegated to private sources. one finds it in letters, one finds it in diaries, it really

was not part of the public discourse much until the 1830's. you see more in the 1850's. but it is there. there were also significant racial and gendered aspects of this drug use at the time. part of this links to the overlapping of race and class. as i mentioned, the way in which people became addicted to the drug primarily was they were prescribed by a doctor. as a consequence, most of the people who became addicted were well-to-do, because they were in a position to summon a doctor when they became ill. so the fact that they had access to doctors in this respect worked against them. they might end up addicted to a drug. at the time, there were widely held beliefs that opiates affected different groups, different ethnic groups, different races, in different

ways. there was the belief that some races had greater development of the brain, and that opium would affect their minds more than their bodies. these notions did have british antecedents. he publishes a paper in which he presents himself as a scholar. he mentions he was fluent in ancient greek at the age of 18. he suggested that because of his refinement in education, he could derive more pleasure from opium then could turks, who were sort of scene is the most common drug users of the time. expressed doubt in his book that any turk could have had half the pressure -- pleasure i had using the drug. he went on to state that i honor the barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an englishman. there were white americans who share this perception. in his 1850 essay about the opium trade, dr. nathan allen stated that the greater development of the nervous system, the more marked and

diversify the effects of the drug. so in reference to the said ift races, he operations are not uniform. on the indian and negro, its effect partake more of an animal nature. where there is greater development activity of the brain, together with the nervous system, it operates or directly and effectively on the mind. the theory was it would not just have the impact on white minds, but that this was a positive impact essentially. dr. william cornell, who published a work in 1860 called "how to enjoy life" connected allen's observations to the rhetoric of john randolph of roanoke. randolph was a virginia congressman, he died in 1833, and he had been dependent on opium for a very long time. cornell suggested that randolph's what could be -- wit could be attributed to

his opium use. may we not conclude that many of those retorts which petrified his hearers come over to the halls of congress with laughter, originated in the stimulus of this potent drug? whereas the racial aspect focused on how the drug affected different users. gender helps to explain why certain people use opiates more than others in the first place. well-to-do women were especially likely to become addicted, and some antebellum social expressed concern in what they thought was a trend. these were painkillers, they can help a person sleep, but they also help with anxiety. as bill noted, it was unseemly for a woman to be bringing alcohol, opium however was seen as a medicine. as a consequence, it was and began woman could use to relax, to allay her concerns without appearing to violate any social norms, and without becoming inebriated.

whereas someone who is drunk a lot can be identified by behavior, someone who has used opium -- the signs are far more subtle. in 1830, george clark in kentucky's western room area, warned that use of lot number had become -- laudanum had become common. he stated that this was an old problem, as 40 years ago, its victims could be pointed out among the noblest women of our parent state, which would have been the state of virginia. according to clarke, well-to-do women opted for opium because they abhored drunkenness from the use of strong liquors. they could use laudanum without criticism. there are racial dimensions, gender, and also class dimensions. he said it was merely unknown among the lower class. and compared with alcohol, its consequences are not so immediately disgusting.

in fact, he said a woman who had taken laudanum would have a sparkling eye, and that this was appealing. clark consider the problem to be grave, specifically because it was confined to respectable characters. there is also a gender dimension to the reason that women had pains and anxieties in the first place. sally mcmillan and catherine clinton had noted that doctors administered opiates to women who suffered from female complaints, and to pregnant women who had pain or insomnia. also there was a popular belief that women were less able than men to withstand pain, and in fact, there are cases of men being criticized, derided, because they seem to react too much to try to take care of so theyn illnesses, were supposed to be stoic. women didn't have that, and were more likely to be prescribed

opiates. but no one has noted that some women to opiates to deal with loneliness among or to cope with the loss of a child. in the 1840's, north carolinians and cameron began taking laudanum and morphine to deal with malarial symptoms, which kept taking them to ease her worries and sorrows. she lost a son opiates. but no one has noted that some and soonopiates to deal with i9 thereafter she was nursing her other children. her husband again -- began to assume his wife's duties, and he informed her sister his wife is left without the aid of opium. it is crucial to pay attention to the ways in which attitude about race and gender shape the issue, because perceptions shape society's response. as david observed, what we think about addiction very much depends on who is addicted. thank you.

>> i appreciate being including -- included on this panel, especially with bill, whose book was a big inspiration for me when i went to graduate school. much of the scholarship on the early history of addiction has been a conversation with a friend of bill's, and his article the discovery of addiction, which was written during the golden age about all studies at uc berkeley in the 1970's, and published in the journal about all studies in 1978. his article was concerned with finding the roots of the modern disease theory of addiction, which emerged in the 1940's. he emphasized not only the alcohol addiction had a historical dimension, but also that it was dependent on economic and social context. that sociological sensibility just heard in bill's work as well.

a lot of the subsequent scholarship on their early history of addiction, and by that come i mean pre-1877, has centered on arguing about when the modern concept of addiction began to emerge. this preoccupation with addiction is really a reflection of 20 century medical history. in the 20th century, medical and responses. a phenomenon of exclusion of health conditions. populism is a terrible public health problem, but even the liquor industry would agree with that. but it is relatively recently, and despite strong opposition from the liquor industry, and we have agreed that drunk driving is a health problem, or that binge drinking is a health problem for young college students. this preoccupation with alcoholism and addiction has a history all its own. it has to do with the failure of prohibition, the emergence of alcoholics anonymous, and other factors. this preoccupation has also

warped our historical understanding about all and drug abuse.lcohol and drug it has led scholars to exaggerate the historical importance of some sources, while ignoring others. following levine, scholars often cite benjamin rush as being the first to advance the modern notion about all addiction, and often people point to russia's. that compulsive drinking constituted a disease of the will. it does bear a passing resemblance to a modern notion of addiction, there is no into the -- evidence that his theory gained wide exception. he wasn't thinking of drinking when he thought of the idea, he borrowed the idea am a french physician. his main concern was explaining the phenomenon of political murder. he added the idea that drinking can also be a disease, as an afterthought, very late in his life. rush also proposed that drinkers should be confined to sober homes.

pointedlars have often effort to an reform drunkards. he believes the drivers were essentially akin to murderers. they were more dangerous to society than thieves. he wanted to forcibly incarcerate them in the sober homes without trial or the right of habeas corpus. because they were so damaging to society. this was not an enlightened reform effort. i think that rush absolutely is underappreciated for the profound influence he had on temperance ideology. and the concern that he shaved within the american medical profession without all of you. but he was not an architect of a

modern theory of addiction. it is only after his death that physicians became actively involved in treating inebriates. while physicians warned of the danger is that intemperance, theirs was an education campaign. in the 1800's, doctors become intensely fascinated by our call induced -- alcohol induced insanity. delirium tremens we refer to today as a symptom that can develop into cases of acute alcohol withdrawal. they debated if it was called by withdrawal or not, but they thought of it as alcohol induced insanity. delirium tremens rapidly revolutionized the treatment of alcoholics. prior to 1810, if you were overcome by intoxication, you would be confined to jail. after the 1820's, inebriates were increasing we put in the hospital beds and treated. when you look at the vast majority of medical literature

written in the 19th century, most of it -- 90% of it is written about delirium tremens, not compulsive drinking. these new medical beliefs and practices were both shaped and shaped by considerations of class and gender. these considerations were explicit in the medical literature. physicians posited that delirium tremens most commonly struck men who had fallen into misfortune. once respectable men who had come upon business failure. these concerns especially thrived in the wake of the financial panic of 1819. if there is one event that is most influential, it was the panic of 1819. physician believes that delirium tremens victims should be treated with more compassion,

since so many of them had been victims of economic misfortune. at the same time, there this medical concern developing, is also an outpouring of writing about how the spike in urban poverty has created -- is created by intemperance. this was not new. it was in the wake of the panic of 1819 that this rhetoric becomes much stronger. what this meant for inebriate s was a system of care, if you could call it a system, that was fractured by class and gender. and to some extent, race. increasingly in public institutions, you saw two categories of inebriate, one part treated for delirium tremens, and one are confined for intemperance. people who were drunk on the streets would still be thrown in jail. people were passed out might be

a house for intemperance. this category of inebriate was overwhelmingly poor. and they tended to be 50% men and 50% women. the gender breakdown was almost equal. on the other hand, people treated for delirium tremens were overwhelmingly male. 85% male. a larger percentage of them come from middle-class professions, and even if they didn't, they were least employed. the fact that there were so few female victims of delirium tremens, there is evidence that that was exaggerated by concerns about respect ability. commentators and physicians claimed that women suffering from delirium tremens were often diagnosed as having brain fever to protect their social reputation. african-american showed very rarely and records. as may be because they did very little drinking. i think it is also likely that it is because of racism.

for instance, in burial records, you see lots of records of people -- poor people who died of intemperance. you see very few black people who die of intemperance. but i think that is because the city just an didn't care enough to record a cause of death for african-american, if they recorded the death at all. but that is just my impression. the first convincing medical theories about all addiction are people -- poor people who died published in the 1820's and 1830's. these come out of the medical literature on delirium tremens. as with research on delirium tremens, edition speculative speculatedns addiction derives from the stomach. it repeated on stimulation of the stomach created a constant craving for that stimulus, and 1830's. want you to that stimulus away, the mine would be thrown into a state of insanity. want you to that stimulus away, the mine would be thrown into a state of insanity. the theory about alcohol addiction always had more influence on the temperance movement than they did on the medical profession. they tended to be published in prize essays that were sponsored

by temperance organization. they might be in medical reports written by medical associations in support of the temperance movement. and certainly physicians lecturing for the temperance movement lectured on the dangers about all is in. and they also argued that this disease was completely untreatable. they created a lot of public anxiety, and then refused to respond to that public anxiety. this is despite the fact that there is lots of popular demand for addiction treatment. in the 1820's and 30's, there are popular nostrams sold the, stick your drunkards that promised to cure drunkards. there were promising results to these experiments. and, actually, there were some promising results.

but mainstream physicians rejected this idea of treating drunkards, which had a lot to do with professional incentives. in the 1840's, the asylum stick your drunkards that promised to cure drunkards. there were promising results to these experiments. superintendent received numerous appeals from people who wanted to commit an intemperate friend or family member. he occasionally accepted these patients, but always regretted it, and had very little luck treating these patients. these concerns about alcohol addiction expressed in the temperance movement, expressed in these appeals to this doctor were strongly shaped by class and gender is associations. a person might write and say, but, he is not a drunkard, it's just that he has become so enslaved alcohol that he is going to ruin himself and his family. similar to the delirium tremens diagnosis, describing compulsive drinking as a treatable disease served to distinguish a respectable man who happen to have a drinking problem from a

lowly drunkard. women were also treated for habitual drinking. but physicians rarely discussed this openly. it might be because it was rare, but because the social the social implications for much greater for women than they were for men. their social reputation was much more likely to be protective. while addiction was a huge concern in the mid-19th century, it shouldn't obscure the fact that 19th century americans were probably concerned with the political, social, and health consequences of heavy drinking. addiction was only one aspect. "10 nights in a barroom," it had consequences for the whole community, not just the male individual. in the 20th century, we have collapsed these concerns into a focus on addiction, the struggle of the individual with depraved influences. projecting that modern

instability into the past, it might be helpful for us to think broadly about the history of abuse. way might give us a better of appreciating the variety of historical responses to the challenges posed by addictive substances. >> intoxication was subject to new practices and medical epistemology in the antebellum years, as matthew just observed. also the site of cultural practices of diagnosis and care. the case of john goff's recovery from alcohol dependence, for example, begins in october of 1843 with a public act, attending the meeting of the world -- of the will temperance

society in massachusetts. said, i was once respectable and happy and had a i'm house was, miserable, and blighted and outcast from society. there is little hope of ever becoming that which i once was. having promised to sign the pledge, i determined not to break my word. he signed it total abstinence resolved to free himself from the inexorable tyrant of rom. along with thousands of other americans who subscribed to the washingtonian reformation in the turned to theshe pledge as a cure for alcohol

dependence, believing he had , which hadoral power been perfectly useless. his recovery from alcoholism begins with this act of standing in a public space of the worcester townhall, dedicating himself, along with some many others, to the pursuit of .ealth, wealth, and happiness thousands of men, women, and children signed abstinence pledges, asserting their equal rights and obligations in what the editor called "moral governance." wouldstinence pledge commit to norms of well-being that were both individual and

collective, promising self-improvement and mutual aid. washingtonian testified in person and in print that a man could undergo dramatic transformations in individual appearance and conduct. restored to being his station in life, as charles woodward wrote in his recovery narrative in 1843. the very speed of the change of character left the pledge is magic might, as woodward put it, .he power a thirst for a call as if a

tyrant or demon was inside. offering man had a chance for heroes him -- here was him in what is called the great battle of life. it is a grand thing to see a man struggle, he would tell audiences. some men aret, and fighting all the days of their lives. unlike the triumphant defeat that mark frederick douglass is resurrection from slavery into a the battle of individuals against what we now call addiction did not bring or asdom brought changes decisive as political liberation or religious conversion, with which it was so often associated . like many washingtonians, charles woodward returned to

drinking and was dead just two years after his narrative was published. spoke, before his new brothers and sisters in the washingtonian society and before many others in the years ahead, his record of recovery expanded here and ask ration of stories accretion of stories. always from personal experience, he claimed, and from the experiences of the many men and women he met during his travels as a temperance lecturer. like many other first-person narratives of recovery, goff

probed sensations that motivated the will. i witnessed accounts of the humanization from inside the , revealing truths about the moral psychology of manhood that were invisible. example, one theme that emerged as a recurrent one in were hisrmances symptoms of the delirium tremens that he would perform. instruction on what delirium tremens looked like. emerged as the pivotal one in his redemption in

an autobiography published in 1845, which offered an extended set in the streets of worcester. a complete stranger tapped him on the soldier and addressed him , a touch of kindness that went right to my heart, he wrote. a turning point for his .ependence on alcohol a decision to repay the gift of the strangers freely given kindness. that man has placed confidence in me, and on that account, i love him. of will is broken not by masculine self-assertion but by a seemingly arbitrary touch of compassion that would "turn the front of my life in a new channel."

his moral sense awakened. the next day, he signed the pledge. when goff broke his pledge, he seized to the long in any formal and would increasingly depend on christian faith and .umility the intensity and scale in which this one individual accounted for his recovery in public and the debates about character and attended his for decades as a temperance lecturer offered 19th-century america a case study for self-governance.

reckoning addiction and recovery , his personal history became public evidence of the limits and possibilities of individual will. evidence of his ability to inspire acts of temperance across boundaries of race, gender, and class. women were an especially prominent constituency in his .udiences they really run the temperance another, providing a example of this universality of

identification, comes after aomment made lecture that he gave to an african-american temperance society in virginia. when a slave shared his record of alcohol at much shorter lengths. very much obliged to you for coming and speaking to we colored people. helps.the pledge calculationsmake that won't come for eternity if he drinks much liquor. however different the circumstances and the resources on which they drew, goff and the foundwho should his hand

a shared redemption. .ot self invention self-management of identity over time. us,he slaves, and reminds the causes and affects play social differences. the capacity to act towards our mutual well-being depends on cultural resources. the ways of knowing ourselves, managing our desires, relating , thery, signed pledges --ernative to with the rise of social medical

sciences, the wheel became a metaphysical concept to be refuted by behaviorism and other forms of anti-humanist .bjectivism how then might institutions of moral governance help us understand how the individual as a category of identity was shaped by early american history's of gender, race, and class? how did the cultural politics of addiction and recovery helped to shape what john dewey described is a democratic faith in the individual as a moral actor, and ideal of spiritual life? thank you. i'm going to speak on the

other side of opium. she did medicinal opium. i'm going to do smoking opium. in the mid-19th century, american writers sarcastically called opium dens the halfway houses towards pandemonium, and those who frequented the --ablishment smoking opium entered the united states with the arrival of the chinese during the gold rush. the chinese met with vociferous complaints that accuse them of freaking cheap competition. others considered opium dens far more sinister to america's development than the threat of low-paid labor. the doctors and journalists worried that the side effect of the narcotic threatened the goals of the united states and demand an end to smoking opium in the nation. looking to the history of the british opium trade with china,

american physicians and reporters found fearful resort -- results. during the mid 18th century, the british began trading with the chinese for porcelain, t, and self. silver, notdemanded needing any of the items offered by the british. it is of the drain on the treasury, the british shift opium to china. the british produced opium in india. took it toders china. between 1729 and 1832, opium toes increased rapidly nearly 24,000 chests sold. by the 1820's, not of the narcotic entered china to service the needs of one million addicts. anti-chambers of hell outnumbered all other retail businesses and most

chinese towns. in the opium dens, new smokers require only 2-6 grams of opium at a time, while experienced smoker needed 300 and day to achieve the same experience. china, that meant two thirds of a days pay. china's opium dens brought together smokers from every including life, intellectuals, military men, merchants, all -- artists. american doctors and reporters noted that the jams in the united states existed far from environment of home and family. smoking opium induced sleep and dreams that symbolize the passive it he undesirably in a growing nation whereas alcohol encourage gregariousness that is more indicative of america potter view of itself. during the victorian era in the united states, the elite and middle class prized self-control

and in particular, sexual self-control believing that excessive sex -- usually more than once a month -- taxed a limited quantity of vital force in a man's body and a woman lost nervous energy. the upper classes expected much from its country and its women, requiring them to be pure, pious, domestic, and submissive. they believe that the energy spent having sex could be better used developing the nation and that women's efforts should result in a nation socially, culturally, and economically superior. american doctors found that the drug caused men and women to experience uncontrollable sexual desire. one claimed that smokers were habitually tormented with satirize this.

another found that during the first months of smoking, smokers noticed a unusual sensitivity to stimulation. he believed that male smokers, american and chinese, eagerly seduced any female smoker encountered in a den. the thought of white american women having intimate relations and possibly bearing a biracial child as a result were considered reprehensible. although not working side-by-side with a physician, american journalists expressed similar concerns as those in the medical profession. they reported regularly on the opium dens and communities around the united states. especially in the west, where the majority of the chinese live. newspapers such as the "reno evening gazette" ran numerous articles from the 1860's-18 90's demanding the closing of opium dens.

they provided article after article describing the loathesome resorts where they congregate. their articles also focus on the seduction of ladies as well as prostitutes. they expressed fear for the young women in the den. in arizona, they offered an analysis thing the opium part of the episode was nothing. the girl was everything. with the opium habit, the calmness of voluptuousness had passed into her character. she expected, feared, or wanted nothing. even the den proprietor admitted that the girl smoked all the time. she will never stop.

she has gone too far. the reporters left little to the imagination. smoke opium and the lose yourself. a dire warning. because of their wider audience, journalists occasionally used a fire and brimstone approach in their demands for statutes against smoking opium. talking about the potential downfall of the united states due to narcotics, the virginia city territorial enterprise editorialize that the chinese "are sowing among us vice is worse than those that cause the fall of ancient empires and the most terrible evils that immigrants are bring to the costar not to be industries, but through opium and lewd women." calling itself a moral center, the "reno evening gazette" demanded law enforcement agencies break up these vile resorts.

arrest the pagan vendors of the villainous stuff. stop the traffic of men's souls. let us preserver our moral cleanliness and wrench this vice from our midst. unquote. [laughter] i missed my calling. it causes the deterioration of the smoker's morals. the nation needed to be saved from smoking opium to prevent its downfall. the writing of journalists and physicians link the chinese and opium smoking and the narcotic became known as the chinese curse. both groups recognize that even the great -- attached to opium

smoking will not prevent -- from satisfying his appetite. doctors and reporters knew about the drug's potential. their fears of national decay due to opium use were reasonable when remembering that many members of china's military, government, and commercial classes were addicted to the narcotic. after many years of describing the problems associated with smoking opium, journalists and physicians succeeded in getting an ordinance passed banning the substance. in 1876, virginia city, nevada, a town that once housed at least a dozen opium dens, became the first community in the united states to pass an ordinance against smoking opium. from there, other nevada towns as well as the state legislature passed anti-opium den legislation. both groups knew that simply banning the drug would not be enough. they knew that the substance could be easily smuggled into

the united states. as a result, reporters and doctors added their voices to the other anti-chinese voices who hoped to exclude the chinese from immigrating to the united states. forbidding the chinese from moving to the country could solve two problems -- drug use and cheap labor. the journalist and physicians help close the door to chinese immigration but several legislations banning opium did not come until 1909, two generations after. thank you. [applause] >> i know this goes against all of our inclination, but can you all please move to the first several rows for a q and a? please come forward. this is all for television.

second, what i will do is repeat each of your questions for the benefit of everybody. i had a question to start out. it seems to me that one of the fascinating things about your papers is that they seem so inextricably connected to changes in the media. i think that was visibly portrayed -- but to give these

two examples, tom's discussion of the recovery narrative as a rising form of media in the 1840's and 1850's seems to indicate that the notion of recovery could be connection to a way of telling a personal story and likewise with diana's case of accounts of opium dens could be connected to the sensationalism of the newspaper media in that 1840's and 1850's. could you speak to the connection to the literature at the time? >> i want to jump on something ellis mentioned about the way our understanding of the 19th century has been colored by 20th century medical concepts of addiction. it is important to think -- every generation's moral language always sounds insatiable to another. they are hard to sort of recover. i think, you know, when people use these kinds of languages, they are engaging and using the resources of education and public debate, which are really

essential to democratic processes of governance. in our own debate today, about the legalization of marijuana. give it a medical designation and thereby going on -- these debates about regulation require and draw on forms of public consensus and debate which are inevitably about conflicting moral conflict. >> you are right about how in the 1870's and 1880's you have this sensational approach. one of the things that makes writing about opium turkey is that early on, it is just this

private diaries that are written. there is no dialogue -- one of the things that makes writing about opium tricky is that early on, there are just private diaries that are written. i keep it hidden from spouses and doctors. you do not have as much discussion. there was an article published in 1857 where a guy says that we have heard about addiction in asia, but it is here. it is in the pulpit. it is everywhere. the guy who wrote the article said he had written an earlier one and he got so many letters from people who were just so relieved that this problem they were experiencing had been mentioned and that they were eager for some sort of help. you have this aggression. when "confessions of an english opium eater" was published in philadelphia's "saturday magazine," and the reaction to

the work was that this is a foreign curiosity and there was no sense it would come here. it was treated with amusement and no sense of, oh no, what is happening? there are comments but there is not a solidified narrative. in the 1850's you begin to see that there are people who want some sort of discussion of it. in the 1880's, it really is more of the lurid descriptions and you're getting works being a bush constantly, pamphlets, journals, books on the subject. >> it reminded me of an account of a california journalist. he described how editors in california in the late 19th century would send a reporter to cover an opium den. this is supposed to be a test of the courageous of the reporter.

the reporter could either be friends with a cop and go on a raid and some chose to do that. or you could go to the opium den and take opium. those are the only choices they had. if they took opium, did they come back and write a story or did they stay in the den? that was the test. the stories have this lurid quality partly because the editors want that. also, the reporters are being but to the test, so to speak. i question how much of these accounts we can actually trust, right? you know that. then the question -- how do you test the truth of it?

>> first, you don't bother with california. seriously. california has exactly what you said. you need to go inland. virginia city, nevada, hands down. 25,000 people, height of the comstock. you go to montana, idaho. california's rules were much more concerned about chinese prostitution than they were about opium. when you go to nevada, you don't get the reporters. you get mark twain before he was mark twain. you get guys who knew what they were doing. they were experienced in life. there are people who will go in with police men because a lot of times that the police and the opium den proprietor were friends. >> of course. you would have to be. >> the biggest thing about smoking opium is that the no one cared if the chinese smoked opium. if it had stayed a chinese-only habit, no one would have care.

once it starts to go into the white groups -- there are a lot of articles about white female prostitutes. they feel so sorry for them because the chinese might be seducing them, because that leads to the downfall of the american race, quote-unquote. stay out of california because it is a much more intricate community. go elsewhere. >> california tolerated drugs more? >> that could be. the difference between your opium in my opium is [laughter] they are processed much differently. smoking opium is out of the closet.

it is down with the chinese. you go down to chinatown, wherever it may be. with it, most of them are in the west. it is more out of the closet and i think that because it does not really involved ladies until later. it was there. the only way you will get smoking opium is to go into chinatown to get it and you know a source who will go for you. he will bring your groceries, so to speak. he would bring the opium with him. there had to be a chinese connection. i deliberately look for places where there are chinese opium dens, and snow chinese. it does not exist.

you cannot have one without the other. we are different opium. >> on the question of media, i think that while this offered a lot of sensational material for written sources, actually those written sources had their roots in theatrical culture. it is really in john goss. he showed people how to perform the conventions of being an alcoholic. that is something that is worked out on stage first, even going back into the 1810s. nitrous oxide was a theatrical entertainment. people would take it on stage and perform being intoxicated by nitrous oxide. there was speculation about it. physicians became fascinated eye delirium tremens in part because of the phenomenon of these patients perceiving hallucinations evoke romantic connections with forms of the ethical culture. i think addiction has had a performative aspect to it that is very much shaped eye considerations of gender, class, and respectability.

>> do we have any questions? >> how hard was it -- overdose? >> how hard would that how easy was it to die from a laudnum overdose? >> there were a number of cases and there were different reasons. that and morphine were seen as agents of suicide. mary todd lincoln is believed to have attempted this on the 10th anniversary of her husband's death. there were cases in which opium -- this is before morphine -- the strength would vary. it is not like medicine today where any bottle of tylenol will be the same power.

someone may take a dose that was fine last month and it turns out to be stronger than they anticipated. the medicines were used on children. there were cases in which someone would accidentally give a dose that was too strong or maybe it is an old bottle then there is a concentrated amount. so you have it happening in a variety of ways. some intentional, some not, in some cases were the apprentice sells the wrong thing. there are macabre jokes about this. i asked for opium because i wanted quinine and i knew you would mess up the bottle. that kind of thing.

you have a lot of cases about overdoses, both intentional and unintentional at the time. >> [indiscernible] >> they were reported in the main thing i would read about, it would say that the apprentice was fired. that would be the extent of what would happen. they would also report cases where someone -- the phrase they always used is, a rash act. they tried to commit suicide and got to them in time. you have a lot of cases of this. at the time, it was an era in which a family could send a 12-year-old to be drugstore and go get it. there was concerned with the lack of regulation. you do have a whole lot of these episodes, but they seem to be more focusing on being vigilant about this.

regulation did not come until much later. >> another gender and substance -- in the 19th century, a lot of -- in america was nicotine. i don't know to what extent, if any, it was above the threshold is being perceived as a problem. [indiscernible] >> where goss performed, the editor talked about tobacco as kind of disgusting. it was not as bad as alcohol dependency, but he was -- he singled it out as another deforming habit, or a habit that the form one's public character. he would make comments about his habit of chewing tobacco until finally goss stops that and becomes another little chip in the fight of willpower. it is present.

>> 1843 is when -- >> there are cases of people who go insane because of addiction to tobacco and going to be treated. this is also an era where you could die of masturbation. masturbation and tobacco and drinking and opium, these were all vice. going to prostitutes. these were similar behaviors that spoke to like a lack of

self-control. >> to follow-up on the first part, do you know whether the use of tobacco was gendered during this period? >> not as much as it was later. one thing -- rachel jackson smoking her pipe, we assume pipe-smoking to be a male behavior. in the 19th century, women smoked pipes. men probably used tobacco more than women because men have more access to commercial culture. smoking, just as drinking -- smoking and drinking go together, for one thing. if you engage in these male activities, you would have tobacco present. women would be smoking at home.

>> how about snuff? >> that may be the difference. men may be more likely to smoke tobacco and women more likely to take snuff. any references? no, because -- the people who are doing opium are not doing tobacco. >> i have not seen any references to tobacco in any way, shape, or form. >> the use of snuff was never pathologized in the same way as tobacco. >> again, the example of the mail using tobacco is the description i use. at the virginia state capitol in the 1840's and describing the tobacco spit on the marble floor of the capitol as being six inches deep and that everyone had their outdoor boots on and was slipping and sliding around. they did not bother with spitoons.

this is all legislators spitting. after all, the whole state was based on tobacco anyway. you would expect, especially in and virginia, for tobacco to be used in that way. tobacco was chewed even more than it was smoke and you don't hear the stories of women chewing tobacco. >> pathology -- i think the consequences of lung cancer and emphysema occurred -- >> partly because people lived longer. >> [indiscernible]

i was struck by questions of the businesses -- and the businesses of combating alcohol. that delirium tremens could not be treatable medically, there were a couple places where there were not business to be made -- [indiscernible] is there the possibility of incidentally -- social problem. >> even with the delirium tremens, you could trade on that in culture and consume it in a sense. through performances. it was such a visible part and especially in emergence intemperance dramas which were like broke records and notable

and notorious for the performance of delirium tremens. >> [indiscernible] way to making a name for yourself. >> the whole business of reform offered lots of opportunities for new kinds of careers.

as writers, reporters, editors. >> john goss may have been the first person in the country to make a living by temperance performance. he was a role model for others to follow in his footsteps. at the same time, there is an underlying moral movement, a moral fervor that underlies this. even though there may be a business aspect to this, and people can see how they can gain something out of it, they would argue that they are performing for the public good and that the rewards they get financially are incidental. i propose in the same way that today, a televangelist would say that the money comes in from the tv show is incidental to the saving of souls or the saving of lives, as people who are inspired by the preaching. it is incidental rather than a main goal.

>> [indiscernible] >> if you think about it, they have to. the morals would have no meaning if there was opposition to the money. the lack of money would suggest that the morals were not being properly sold or expressed. >> for doctors, it was to their advantage to participate in temperance movements and the horrors of alcohol. they were catering two sober middle-class patients who could afford to pay their fee. in a medical career, you had to be a self-made man. it is not until the civil war that the addiction profession becomes a career path and then the professional incentive changes for doctors.

in some ways, doctors create the market that john goss benefited from. >> it seems that opium speakers -- women -- it seems there was not as much emphasis on selling opium as there was of the drama of the husband who drinks his wages every week and sending his family into poverty. is that right? there was less a demonization of the sellers of opium? >> again, the split in the opium is important. medicinal opium is going to be different from my smoking opium. out west, it is largely a male population. virginia city is a classic example. you have 8-1 odds. eight guys for every single female. in other cases, it is worse.

if the chinese smoke it, nobody cared. it is when you start messing with the handful of women in town that -- excuse me -- the white men get upset. as far as the advertising and business side of it, you see ads in all of the western newspapers for dts. regular opium addiction, smoking opium addiction, alcohol addiction, tiny ads that are not an inch high. they are in all of it. i think it may be that pro-male thing. leave the ladies out of it and we will be ok. >> for medicinal opium, there are ads as diana was saying.

there are discussions of cultivating opium domestically on the grounds of why are we sending all this money to import something that we need? there was no moral objection that i found. the main opposition is that it was prohibitive with labor costs. there were many that said we have the right climate. we could do this. there are people that grow opium poppies but it has never been done on a large scale. thanks to that, we do have the import statistics. we could see there was a duty starting in 1842 and the amount imported is growing at a rate higher than population growth and that is when you start to see something is going on here. >> that is only the legal opium import. again, you have the split in the opium because the chinese are importing bricks of it and you bring it into an opium kitchen. vancouver, canada, had a lot of those. you had that and split it into different things.

>> smoking opium -- smoking as an adjective, is a different thing and that is how they are able to ban smoking opium. >> [indiscernible] so much of the opium use is the gastrointestinal indignities. the moment where he sees his smoking habit transform in front of them, that happened into a problem is a sea voyage and he has to be a ship captain to look at this and resolve the issue. >> he calls a constipation.

>> my question is in the discourse around opium, whether it is smoked or -- do you see a discussion when it comes to this issue? >> all the time. >> how is the difference between men and women? >> to be honest with you, i have only seen there is it causes constipation. there is no discussion to what happens. they say that after you back off from smoking opium, conditions get enter. you redevelop an appetite. with smoking opium, you don't really care about eating. that will lead to problems, too. you will not drink water and all the rest. with the dehydration -- you do not get that. if you can back away from it -- there is no guarantee you will become addicted to opium. even today, doctors don't understand why she could look at a opium bottle and get addicted and i could smoke in for the rest of my life and not. when you have surgery in the united states and they give you the pain medication,

hydrocodone, all of those, you notice that they always give you a laxative? that is why. otherwise the hydrocodone is going to stop you up, so to speak. nobody talks about it. i think it might be too private. >> as i mentioned, opium could take care of pain and insomnia, but diarrhea was one of the things he could treat. i found many cases where they would use that as a remedy but nothing in terms of a gender split is coming to mind in terms of the outcome. >> i have seen a gendered medical discords on constipation in the 1820's. doctors felt that women, because of issues of respectability, did not use the bathroom as much as they should.

that also had to do with concerns of women's fashion restrictive wear. >> there was a regular business for alcohol. was there much of a business in terms of reform for laudanum or opium? >> for smoking opium, no. journalists are some of the biggest proponents of getting rid of it. you get rid of some of the people who did not like the chinese because they were cheap labor. you start getting some of them going, we can add opium to the argument and it can be brought in. the two teams kind of work together. >> was there a developed movement --

>> no. there are some doctors who do it, but not a temperance league. >> you think there would be a business for people helping others to recover from opium addictions. quincy, about how he dropped his own addiction from radical amounts to a much more manageable amount. >> i know one case of a woman who was at pennsylvania hospital for a year, and this is in 1808, and the doctors are trying to substitute other things for opium. she was never cured and there are discussions of either substituting one thing for another, slightly diminishing the dose and not telling the person, and you have these remedies that are tried but you also have accounts of people but it never worked where they are able to stop for a couple of years and they come back to it.

the only thing on a larger scale are the quack remedies later. they may have thought they were cured but that is because the solution was 50% more keen -- morphine. >> alcohol is associated with violence and opium is not. alcohol creates angers across society which creates a movement, but opium does not. >> connected to that, not only do you have that outcome but there are cases of people who were able to hide their dependency. they were ashamed of it and therefore, sometimes a doctor will say that this woman has for years had this problem and she only just into me with it. the fact that not only were these not outcomes, people had been quiet and had incentive to do so.

>> i don't think that you see addiction, alcohol addiction as a problem until people start trying to quit drinking with the rise of the temperance movement. is the same with the cigarettes in the 1920's. it is in the 1980's when everyone is trying to quit that you're aware of addiction. i did not find as much evidence of opium addiction treatment as i thought i would in hospitals. there are cases but i think that is why. they did not have to quit. they were not being criminalized. there was not a huge temperance movement. >> it was not a hard thing to keep the supply, even though it had to be a growing supply. >> were doctors complicit in your kind of opium addiction? for them to make too much of a fuss out of it --

>> absolutely. it is a little bit later than the scope of this conference, but in the 1860's, morphine injections become sort of a fad. a syringe seemed extremely modern. from the doctor's perspective, giving the drug, the pain is gone, the family is happy, the patient is happy. there are a lot of morphine injections but injected morphine has the highest rate of addiction. you have doctors saying that they cannot treat every ache and pain this way, even though it is tempting. you have this recognition. early on, the training of doctors was not good. the fact that they have this -- and you have doctors that are saying in essence, if i had to give up every other drug and just use opium, that would be fine because it had this wonder

drug quality. there is this recognition that doctors have to be much more selective in terms of prescribing it. >> the training of doctors was uneven rather than not good. [laughter] doctors were also complicit in alcohol addiction and opium was seen as an alternative to alcohol because alcohol was seen as more addictive than opium. >> i think one thing you have to remember is that there is opium and it all comes from the poppy. any poppy can produce it. it does not make any difference. some are better than others. morphine comes from opium. morphine is just a more condensed version of opium. if you get a morphine shot or your doctor gave you morphine, you are in trouble. of course, heroin comes out of that. you have to remember that. if you have a doctor saying,

have some morphine -- thanks. >> laudanum is opium and alcohol. was the use of laudanum and indication of alcoholism? >> it was actually more a sign of opium addiction. he was found in a state that is described as disoriented and in kind of a stupor. some people said it was opium, but actually it was laudanum. >> thomas to quincy says in his book that he drank laudanum. he describes his withdrawal as lasting for months and how horrible it was. that mystified most recent sellers because withdrawing from opium last about a week and it is like having a bad case of the flu. robin morrison noticed that the

problem was he did not realize he was trying to quit two things at once. he drank a lot of wine in addition. he is also trying -- the alcohol is what was compounding the problem. >> with him being british, you have a problem with the british and opium because it is the fault of the british that opium is everywhere. the british have that. they would say opium is bad. i have to slap their own hands because it is their fault for the spread. you have that. the other thing to remember is that you have huge opium dens because there are not that many chinese. you will get some down in stephanie and -- i forgot the name of the other one.

there are two areas in london, the east end. the british do not want to say opium is bad because it is if the british are bad and we all know they are not. lightbank our panel -- let's thank our panel for this wonderful and engaging discussion. [applause] >> you are watching american everyy tv, all weekend, weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, i caps on facebook -- like us on facebook. each week, american history tv's "reel america" rings you archival films.