Hi Robin -
Thomas Crothers uses the word "addiction" in the current way in 1893 in 
The Disease of Inebriety From Alcohol, Opium and ... (New York: E. B. 
Treat, reprinted by Arno Press, p. 326).
   I am almost certain that within the last few days I ran across an 
even older example, but wouldn't know where to start looking. 
"Addiction" had such a broad meaning from the start, as discussed by 
Warner for example, that it could be used in many ways -- including the 
current way -- just as soon as a modern addiction concept emerges (late 
eighteenth/early nineteenth century). I think the more interesting 
change involves the way addiction eventually achieves an exclusive, 
medicalized meaning. From then on, when someone casually says "I'm 
addicted..." with respect to a benign habit, it could serve as an 
analogy, with possibly a jocular intent. Anyone know when that happened?
  Also, I agree wholeheartedly that other regions besides North America 
and Britain should receive more attention. Of course you, of all people, 
know that the book I'm still working on (revised diss) is and must be a 
North American account.
  One reason that North America receives much attention this way is that 
we have made such a huge issue of substance abuse. I mean, in the 19th 
century, temperance often seemed to dominate the political landscape, 
and drugs often did the same in the 1980s.  In the 20th century, we had 
three wars on drugs: early, middle (Nixon) and late (Reagan). Another 
thing is that when I read up on temperance/drug history in other 
regions, my consistent impression is that they have been, at least in 
comparison, more rational than we have. The drug/alcohol scene in North 
America has been so, well, nutty, that studying it is simply a hoot. Can 
Europe really compete with that? Can Latin America? (I'm really asking 
because I don't know).
Peter

Robin Room wrote:

> Peter and Bill --
>    I know this is not what Peter was asking for, but the trouble with 
> the standard literature on this is that it is still so focused on the 
> US and a little on Britain.  We really need some work trying to trace 
> what happens where and when elsewhere.  Does the Foucauldian shift to 
> an addiction/alcoholism concept found for the US by Harry Levine and 
> Mairi McCormick (and confirmed by Peter himself, against the 
> counterarguments of Warner and Porter; Contemporary Drug Problems 
> 28:363-390, 2001) show up at the same time in other places; does the 
> timing and places of its appearance mirror a growth in/diffusion 
> of temperance thinking; or can the shift happen without an attachment 
> to temperance thinking?  The materials for doing such an analysis are 
> probably available in the secondary literature for at least many 
> European and English-speaking countries, but I'm not aware of anyone 
> specifically taking this issue on cross-culturally.
>    What can be done more eaily is track the institutional inception 
> and diffusion of inebriate homes and asylums and to some extent the 
> diffusion of medical ideas.  Jim Baumohl and I started down this track 
> some time ago (http://www.bks.no/bauroom.pdf). Papers like Tom Babor's 
> (Classification of alcoholics: Typology theories from the 19th century 
> to the present. Alcohol Health and Research World 20(1):6-17, 
> 1996) summarize some aspects of the shifts in medical thinking.  
>    But this task is not the same as the histoire de mentalités task of 
> studying shifts in popular conceptualization.
>    I was embarrassed the other day when a couple of Finns asked me 
> when the terms "addiction" and "addict" begin to be widely used in 
> English in approximately its modern sense -- for this I had no better 
> off-the-cuff answer than "maybe around 1900".   Does anyone have 
> a better answer?  Crothers is using it unselfconsciously in 1902, and 
> Towns talks about "tobacco addiction" in 1915. I suspect the term 
> would have been recognizable to an American newspaper reader by 1910 
> -- but to a British or Australian??
>    (An interesting sidelight is that neither Finnish or Swedish have a 
> word for "addiction" -- there was an old term roughly equivalent to 
> "inebriety", and now there is an exact translation of "dependence", 
> but the common term used in Swedish where "addiction" would be used in 
> English translates as "misuse".)
>    [Second sidelight: I went to the New York Times ProQuest archives, 
> http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/advancedsearch.html, and found 
> that "addiction" and "addict" both were occurring about 10 times a 
> year in  NYT articles at the eginning of the archive, around 1851 and 
> 1852.  But in the more general meaning of "bound over to" or "devoted 
> to", albeit with a very negative connotation.  An example which I 
> could see and pass along for free (the use was in the first paragraph): 
>
>       The eagerness of those prints which addict themselves of the 
> interest of absolutism, leads them into all manner of adsurdities. It 
> was only a day or two since, one of them, if possible a little more 
> stringent in its anti-popular nations than the rest of its diminutive 
> tribe, leveled a compound syllogism, at Hungarian patriotism, of which 
> the following is perhaps a fair statement:... ["German radicalism", 
> New York Daily Times, Dec. 18, 1851])
>
>         Robin 
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Bill White
> Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 2:52 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Science of Alcoholism
>
>     Peter,
>
>            The following are among the classics on this topic.
>
>     Brown, E. (1985).  What shall we do with the Inebriate?  Asylum
>     Treatment and the Disease Concept of Alcoholism in the Late
>     Nineteenth Century.  Journal of the History of the Behavioral
>     Sciences, 21:48-59.
>
>     Bynum, W. (1968).  Chronic Alcoholism in the First Half of the
>     19th Century.  Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 42:160-185.
>
>     Levine, H. (1978). The Discovery of Addiction:  Changing
>     Conceptions of Habitual Drunkenness in America.  Journal of
>     Studies on Alcohol, 39(2):143-174.
>
>     MacLeod, R. (1967). The Edge of Hope:  Social Policy and Chronic
>     Alcoholism 1870-1900.  Journal of History of Medicine, 23:215-245.
>
>     Marconi, J. (1959).  The Concept of Alcoholism.  Quarterly Journal
>     of Studies on Alcohol  20(2):216-235.
>
>            There is also an annotated chronology of the disease
>     concept of addictiuon that is posted at www.bhrm.org (under
>     "Papers and Publications--Addiction") that you may find helpful.
>
>     Bill White
>
>      
>
>      -----Original Message-----
>
>     From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society
>
>     [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Peter Ferentzy
>
>     Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2004 7:40 PM
>
>     To: [log in to unmask]
>
>     Subject: Science of Alcoholism
>
>      
>
>     I'd be interested in one or two concise chronological accounts of the
>
>     scientific ideas surrounding chronic drunkenness in the 18th and 19th
>
>     centuries in North America. I'm aware of quite a few books, but
>     not too
>
>     many articles. I'm looking for brief overviews right now.
>
>     Thanking you all in advance,
>
>     Peter
>