Delinquency and Heroin Addiction in Britain*
| Author | I. Pearce James |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486586900200202 |
| Date | 01 June 1969 |
| Published date | 01 June 1969 |
Delinquency and
Heroin
Addiction in Britain'
I. PEARCE
JAMESt
1 -
Historical
Preview
THE social as well as
the
medicinal uses of
the
opium poppy
are
as old as
man's
recorded history. The seventeenth century physician
John
Jones des-
cribed
the
treatment
of opium addiction in 1700. He stressed
the
hazards of
abrupt
withdrawal
and
advocated aregime of slowly progressive weaning.
However,
it
was
the
invention of
the
hypodermic syringe by Pravaz
and
the
introduction into medicine in
the
mid-nineteenth
century of
the
potent
opium alkaloid morphia which.
turned
opium smoking
into
"morph-
inomania".
The
term
"euphoria" was appropriately coined by Levinstein
in
1875 to "indicate
the
marvellous sense of bien-etre experienced by aperson
who
has
received
an
injection of a centigramme of morphia." (Tanzi, 1909).
The medical
literature
on morphinism
dates
back to 1864 whilst Erlen-
meyer
in
1886 gave a comprehensive description of combined morphine
and
cocaine addiction ("cocomania"). Erlenmeyer (1892) also described
the
syn-
drome of
neonatal
abstinence in
infants
born to addicted
mothers
thus:
The children have
in
their
first few days of life to pass through a
stage of abstinen.ce similar to
that
of adults during which 'dangerous
collapses occur
and
in which life of
the
child
can
only be saved by
an
inj ection of morphia.
By
the
latter
decades of
the
century
narcotic addiction
had
become
widespread
throughout
Europe
and
in
the
United
States
where estimates
suggested
that
between 1%
and
4% of
the
population were affected (SChur,
1963) .
Tanzi (1909) wrote "forty years ago
there
were no morphtnomantacs,
only opium
eaters
...
nowadays
the
syringe of Pravaz is to be found every-
where". The
morphtnehabit
achieved acertain fashionable notoriety whilst
the
poorer segments of
the
community
turned
to
laudanum
(at
a few
coppers
per
ounce) or to
the
many
patent
medicines which contained
morphia as a
cheaper
and
more private solace
than
alcohol to
the
rigours
of city poverty.
In
spite of periodic warnings
the
medical profession seems to have
been slow to accept
the
potential dangers of
the
situation
and
as
late
as
1899 physicians were still advocating
the
treatment
of chronic alcoholism
by
the
substitution of opiate
habituation
(Schur, 1963).
*Based on a
paper
read
at
ameeting of
the
Society for the
Study
of Drug Addiction,
University College, London, March 26th, 1968.
tM.A., M.B., M.A.N.Z.C.P., D.P.M. Home Office, Prison Medical Service, H.M. Prison,
Brixton, London.
69
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