Clasificación:
364.133650951 D575
Título:
Narcotic culture : a history of drugs in China. --
Imp / Ed.:
Londres, Inglaterra : Hurst & Company, 2016.
Descripción:
xiii, 298 p. ; 22 cm. 22 cm.
Contenido:
Acknowledgements. -- 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 (c. 1880-1940). -- 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. -- Notes. -- Bibliography. -- Index. --
Resumen:
Tomado de Amazon: "To this day, the perception persists that China was a
civilisation defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade
commodity, opium--a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts
in the iron grip of dependence. But, as this new edition of Narcotic
Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not
the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth
century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences
of prohibition. They reveal that opium actually had few harmful effects
on either health or longevity; in fact, it was prepared and appreciated
in highly complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing excessive
use. Opium was even used as a medicinal panacea in China before the
availability of aspirin and penicillin. But as a result of the British
effort to eradicate opium, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign
use of that drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine, and countless other
psychoactive substances. The transition from a tolerated opium culture
to a system of prohibition produced a 'cure' that was far worse than the
disease. Delving into a history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic
Culture is part revisionist history of imperial and twentieth-century
Britain and part sobering portrait of the dangers of prohibition."
ISBN:
9781849044721