Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium

by Lucy Inglis

Overview

An intelligent and authoritative history of opium—a drug that has both healed and harmed since the beginning of civilization.

Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the “Milk of Paradise” for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain—and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport, and refine, and subject to an insatiable global demand.

No other substance in the world is as simple to produce or as profitable. It is the basis of a gargantuan industry built upon a shady underworld, but ultimately it is an agricultural product that lives many lives before it reaches the branded blister packet, the intravenous drip, or the scorched and filthy spoon. Many of us will end our lives dependent on it.

In Milk of Paradise, acclaimed cultural historian Lucy Inglis takes readers on an epic journey from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America and Afghanistan, from Sanskrit to pop, from poppy tears to smack, from morphine to today’s synthetic opiates. It is a tale of addiction, trade, crime, sex, war, literature, medicine, and, above all, money. And, as this ambitious, wide-ranging, and compelling account vividly shows, the history of opium is our history and it speaks to us of who we are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643130552
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Lucy Inglis is the creator of the award-winning Georgian London blog and her book of the same name was shortlisted for the History Today Longman Prize. She is also the author of two novels for young adults, including City of Halves, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Branford Boase award. She lives in London.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Maps xii

Introduction xix

Part 1 Ópion, afyuny opium

1 The Ancient World 3

2 The Islamic Golden Age to the Renaissance 26

3 The Silver Triangle and the Creation of Hong Kong 70

Part 2 In the Arms of Morpheus

4 The Romantics Meet Modern Science 115

5 The China Crisis 163

6 The American Disease 203

Part 3 Heroin

7 A New Addiction, Prohibition and the Rise of the Gangster 233

8 From the Somme to Saigon 276

9 Afghanistan 301

10 Heroin Chic, HIV and Generation Oxy 330

Afterword 379

Acknowledgements 383

Notes 383

Index 423

Editorial Reviews

03/11/2019

In this wide-ranging and at times vivid narrative, historian Inglis (Georgian London) charts several millennia of opium’s history, from the drug’s discovery up through the current opioid crisis. Writing in a formal but enjoyable style, Inglis recounts that the opium poppy first appears in the historical record about 5,000 years ago. It spread throughout the ancient world (Aristotle was a fan) as a sleep aid and analgesic before establishing itself in the West as a pain reliever specifically for surgery during the Renaissance. The book rushes through the drug’s early history, but gains coherence and argumentative strength when British history—the author’s area of expertise—intersects with opium’s. As Inglis explains, China’s famous trade routes would become critical for opium’s movement; Chinese authorities determined that it was harming the population, but the two Opium Wars didn’t stop Britain from illegally importing opium poppy and violently defending the drug trade through the 1800s. Westerners were self-medicating with opium-based home remedies starting in the 1700s; use only increased with the inventions of morphine and the hypodermic needle, followed by patented medicines in the 1900s, fomenting contemporary addictions that begin with prescription painkillers. The U.S.’s prohibition on opium in the 1920s led to the cartel-run black market that still supplies America’s nonprescription opiates. This examination is a must-read for anyone interested in the roots of the opioid crisis. Illus. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"An invaluable resource for any reader who wants an exhaustive understanding of the world’s opioid crisis. As Inglis makes clear, opium has long been a substance of deep social, political, religious, and economic significance."

American Conservative

"This sweeping history explores our millennia-long relationship with Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. Deftly tracking opium’s path along global trade routes, Inglis illuminates various cultures and industries that have sprung up around it, from the Chinese opium den to the contemporary pharmaceutical manufacture of opioids."

The New Yorker

"As Lucy Inglis recounts in her sweeping new history of opium, the tension between the substance’s medicinal virtue and its dangers is ancient. [She] untangles these contradictions with gusto. A deeply researched and captivating book."

The Economist

"Lucy Inglis’s fabulous book Milk of Paradise is the history of civilisation as shaped by opium. A triumph, epic in scale and full of humanity."

The Times (London)

"Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans—our willingness to experiment; our ability to become addicts; our pursuit of money. This book tells us more than about opium; it tells us about ourselves."

Peter Frankopan

"A learned, engaging, and ambitious look at the cultural history of a product that’s much talked about these days but little understood. Inglis provides a sweeping history of the cultivation and uses of opium across a millennium and across cultures, showing how it’s been stitched into the fabric of our societies, time and again, always a complex and provocative relationship."

CrimeReads

"An important book."

New Criterion

"This sweeping history explores our millennia-long relationship with Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. Deftly tracking opium’s path along global trade routes, Inglis illuminates various cultures and industries that have sprung up around it, from the Chinese opium den to the contemporary pharmaceutical manufacture of opioids."

The New Yorker

Read and be amazed by a city you thought you knew.

World Monuments Fund [praise for "Georgian London"]

Jam-packed with unusual insights and facts. A great read from a talented new historian.

The Independent [praise for "Georgian London"]

2018-11-21

A sweeping, panoramic history of opium and its deep roots in a vast array of societies and cultures.

Inglis (Crow Mountain, 2016, etc.) opens with an observation from Thomas Jefferson, who noted, "merchants know no country," and ends with her own trenchant observation that the war on opium is endless. In between is a story that stretches across 5,000 years of history and touches nearly every part of human civilization. The author begins in the Fertile Crescent and then traces the cultivation of opium through the Bronze Age, the Greek and Roman civilizations ("Homeric references to the opium poppy are concerned with the need for emotional oblivion, but Greek scholars were also discovering its many medicinal properties"), the Renaissance, the disastrous Opium Wars, and the creation of Hong Kong. Inglis' history is not only wide, but deep due to her keen analysis of how entrenched opium is in modern culture in everything, from medicine to war to addiction to commerce. In the second half of the book, the author covers the isolation of morphine from opium and how new discoveries transformed the West. The third part of the book brings us quickly to today, focusing on the ready availability of professionally produced heroin, the explosion of big pharma, and the markets that have created "Generation Oxy." If there's one message to take from this history, it's that prohibition doesn't work. As Inglis notes, whether it's crimes committed by gangsters or strategies rolled out by massive pharmaceutical companies, this gift from the natural world to ease pain and suffering has become a commodity. She ends where she began: "Within all of these parameters, economies are built, both legal and illegal, petty and international. And whether they be sidewalk dope dealers or pharmaceutical giants, merchants know no country, just as the search for even a glimpse of paradise is constant and without end."

A well-crafted history of civilization seen through the prism of one of the most profitable agricultural products in human history.

Kirkus Reviews

★ Winter 2018

With this latest work, Inglis (Georgian London) presents an intriguing world history of the appearance, spread, use, and abuse of the opium poppy and substances derived from it (morphine, heroine, opioids) from prehistory through today. There are more than 400 species of opium, but the opium poppy was never a wild plant; it has always cultivated. It first surfaced in the West but was lost to the East during the Dark Ages only to resurface again in Europe in the 18th century. Within a century, it was a scourge in both East and West. This account does not slight complicated historical connections: the East India Company's depredations in the Raj fold into production of the poppy farther east. The discussion of the rise of present-day poppy production in Afghanistan is a model of lucidity. Inglis explains how, in 2012, more than 250 million U.S. prescriptions for opioids were written, and that in Walker County, AL, alone, 335.1 were issued per 100 people. VERDICT This timely account will interest advocates and concerned citizens. Inglis's skillful command of style will please them all.—David Keymer, Cleveland

Library Journal

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