Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium
The ultimate book on the incredible, and complex history of opium throughout the world.

Flowers in the Blood lifts the veil of mystery that has surrounded opium down through the ages. Inside, discover:

  • Why a three-thousand-year-old statue of a Greek goddess was crowned with poppies
  • The formulas for Hippocrates’s ancient opium remedies
  • Why the Islamic councils of the wise vilified hashish but venerated opium
  • What really provoked the Opium Wars in China
  • Why John Jacob Astor quit the opium trade
  • The unique role played by Chinese opium in the birth of the American labor movement

    Opium has played a dramatic and varied role in human history, inspiring religious veneration, scientific exploration, the bitterest rancor, and the most fanciful ecstasy. Now, authors Jeff Goldberg and Dean Latimer have provided a complete, insightful history of opium.

    Along the way, the authors provide details of the addictions of S. T. Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, and other literary opium-eaters of the nineteenth century, as well as chronicling the progress of antidrug laws and the ongoing search for an addiction cure.

    Originally published in 1981, this edition of Flowers in the Blood has been updated with a new preface by Goldberg. At times disconcerting—raising serious questions about attitudes and approaches toward powerful drugs and their control—Flowers in the Blood is an essential addition to the literature of opium, and a wide-awake look at the stuff that dreams (and nightmares) are made of.

    Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
  • 1117341885
    Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium
    The ultimate book on the incredible, and complex history of opium throughout the world.

    Flowers in the Blood lifts the veil of mystery that has surrounded opium down through the ages. Inside, discover:

  • Why a three-thousand-year-old statue of a Greek goddess was crowned with poppies
  • The formulas for Hippocrates’s ancient opium remedies
  • Why the Islamic councils of the wise vilified hashish but venerated opium
  • What really provoked the Opium Wars in China
  • Why John Jacob Astor quit the opium trade
  • The unique role played by Chinese opium in the birth of the American labor movement

    Opium has played a dramatic and varied role in human history, inspiring religious veneration, scientific exploration, the bitterest rancor, and the most fanciful ecstasy. Now, authors Jeff Goldberg and Dean Latimer have provided a complete, insightful history of opium.

    Along the way, the authors provide details of the addictions of S. T. Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, and other literary opium-eaters of the nineteenth century, as well as chronicling the progress of antidrug laws and the ongoing search for an addiction cure.

    Originally published in 1981, this edition of Flowers in the Blood has been updated with a new preface by Goldberg. At times disconcerting—raising serious questions about attitudes and approaches toward powerful drugs and their control—Flowers in the Blood is an essential addition to the literature of opium, and a wide-awake look at the stuff that dreams (and nightmares) are made of.

    Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
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    Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium

    Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium

    Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium

    Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium

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    Overview

    The ultimate book on the incredible, and complex history of opium throughout the world.

    Flowers in the Blood lifts the veil of mystery that has surrounded opium down through the ages. Inside, discover:

  • Why a three-thousand-year-old statue of a Greek goddess was crowned with poppies
  • The formulas for Hippocrates’s ancient opium remedies
  • Why the Islamic councils of the wise vilified hashish but venerated opium
  • What really provoked the Opium Wars in China
  • Why John Jacob Astor quit the opium trade
  • The unique role played by Chinese opium in the birth of the American labor movement

    Opium has played a dramatic and varied role in human history, inspiring religious veneration, scientific exploration, the bitterest rancor, and the most fanciful ecstasy. Now, authors Jeff Goldberg and Dean Latimer have provided a complete, insightful history of opium.

    Along the way, the authors provide details of the addictions of S. T. Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, and other literary opium-eaters of the nineteenth century, as well as chronicling the progress of antidrug laws and the ongoing search for an addiction cure.

    Originally published in 1981, this edition of Flowers in the Blood has been updated with a new preface by Goldberg. At times disconcerting—raising serious questions about attitudes and approaches toward powerful drugs and their control—Flowers in the Blood is an essential addition to the literature of opium, and a wide-awake look at the stuff that dreams (and nightmares) are made of.

    Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

  • Product Details

    ISBN-13: 9781628738995
    Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
    Publication date: 02/18/2014
    Sold by: Barnes & Noble
    Format: eBook
    Pages: 320
    Sales rank: 298,124
    File size: 9 MB

    About the Author

    Jeff Goldberg is a freelance writer best known as an investigator of psychoactive drugs and how they work in the brain. Born in Philadelphia, Goldberg's articles on science and medicine have appeared in Life, Discover, Omni, and other magazines internationally.

    Dean Latimer is the former executive of High Life magazine. Born in Canton, New York, Latimer helped to originate the East Village Other as well as the National Lampoon. His articles have also appeared in Oui and Penthouse, amongst others.

    William Burroughs was an American writer and artist, and one of the most recognized figures of the beat generation. He is probably most well-known for his novel Naked Lunch, a controversial work that was subject to one of the most recent obscenity trials for a book in the United States.

    Table of Contents

    Preface, 2014: The Ayatollah's Opium ix

    Introduction: God's Own Medicine William Burroughs 1

    Preface Flowers in the Blood 5

    The Body's Own Opiates

    On Emotions and Molecules

    Eureka! Endorphin and So Much More

    The Pituitary's Pharmacopoeia

    1 Legends 15

    How Opium Came to the Burmese Highlands

    Philistine Opium-Pipes and Poppy-shaped Vases

    The Plant of Joy

    The Poppy Goddess

    Homer's Nepenthe

    Hippocrates, Galen, and Opium as Medicine

    2 Drugs of Good and Evil 31

    Hashish: The Scourge of Medieval Islam

    The Strange Ways and Drugs of the Ancient Scythians

    What the Qur'an Doesn't Say

    The August History of Afyon in the Middle East

    3 The Stone of Immortality 39

    Opium in Medieval Europe

    Marvelous Paracelsus and the Anodyne Specific

    Sir Christopher Wren: The First Intravenous

    "The Mysteries of Opium Reveal'd"

    Addiction Discovered (Reluctantly)

    4 The British Experience 59

    Revolting Drugs and Vile Practices in the English Fens

    The Scandal of Working Class Stimulation

    George III's Porphyria and George IV's Hangover Remedy

    A Death Drug

    5 The Dreamers 71

    A Brief Account of the "Opium-Eater"

    The Case of Poor Coleridge

    A "Monstrous, Gross" But Necessary Medication Sir Walter Scott

    Laudanum, Love, and Death John Keats

    "Poetical Paragraphs and Morphine Draughts" Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    A Most Self-possessed Drug Addict Opium and the Other Romantics Wilkie Collins

    6 China: The Opium Wars 95

    Jardine-Matheson and the Honorable Opium Entrepreneurs

    The Arrival of the Redheaded Barbarians

    The Chinese Opium Epidemic Reconsidered

    Chaos in Guangdong

    Opium Traders Held Hostage

    An Unspoken War Jesus Opium

    7 American Afyon 159

    Perkins of Boston vs. Wilcocks of Philadelphia

    Houqua of Whampoa: The Richest Man in the World

    John Jacob Astor and the Opium Trade

    The "Emily" Affair

    The Cunning John Latimer

    8 Nervous Waste 179

    The Wide Open American Opium Market

    The Annoying Tendency to Self-injection

    Modern Times and Morphine

    Self-abuse and Drug-abuse

    9 Yellow Peril 201

    Mark Twain's Chinatown

    The Chinese and the Job Market

    Samuel Gompers and the "White Labor" Movement

    The Chinaman's Vice

    Yellow Journalism: Coolies, White Women, Children, and Opium

    10 The Father of American Narcotics Laws 217

    The State Department's Hamilton Wright

    The Child Races Act

    Liquor on His Breath Disgraces Wright

    The Harrison Narcotics Act

    11 Heroin Boys 233

    The Urban American Blight

    Bayer's Marvelous Mega-aspirin

    Chippers and Addicts

    Youth Gangs, Bolsheviks, and Heroin

    Harry Anslinger and Heroinomania

    12 The Cure 245

    The Elusive Autotoxin

    Addiction: Vice or Disease

    Federal Narcotics Farms

    The Case for Methadone Maintenance

    Epilogue the Business 281

    Inevitable Results of Unsound Legislation

    The Economics of Heroin

    The Anslinger-McCarthy Connection

    The 5 Percent Solution

    Drug Control: A $52 Billion Business

    For Further Reading 291

    Index 297

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