"If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I  
125 would teach them should be, to forswear thin   
  potations and to addict themselves to sack."

Shakespeare, Henry IV Paet II, line 125. 


---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 08:50:46 +0100
>From: Virginia Berridge <[log in to unmask]>  
>Subject: Re: The rise of Alcoholism/addiction  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>It might be helpful to look for the UK at the parallel 
opium literature on this issue on which there is quite a 
lot. Some discussion in my Opium and the People and also the 
history of the Society for the Study of Addictcion published 
in 1990.
> Bill Bynum's piece on alcoholism and degeneration was 
published in the BJA centenary issue in 1984.
>Re addiction-I've always associuated the rise to 
significance of this concept with the WW1 changes in 
psychiatry which saw, in the UK, the advent of psychology 
(shell shock etc) and structural changes(psychiatry seeking 
a different non asylum based clientele) also the end of the 
possibility of a state funded asylum system for inebriates.
>
>regards,
>Virginia Berridge
>Virginia Berridge
>Professor of History
>Centre for History in Public Health
>Department of Public Health and Policy
>London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
>Keppel Street
>London WC1E 7HT
>Tel:  0207  927 - 2269
>Fax: 0207  637 - 3238
>http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/history
>
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 10/03/04 3:45 PM >>>
>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