FROM PANACEA TO PROBLEM: THE DEMONISATION OF OPIUM IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITAIN

Abstract

This thesis considers the multivalent role of opium in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Britain. It traces the not insignificant changes to the perception of the safety and suitability of opiate use in medical and non-medical contexts between their instigation in the 1870s until century’s close. It argues that there is a paucity of meaningful contextualisation and synthesis of opium in the existing historical scholarship. By re-assessing three particular historiographical landmarks in this field, this work contributes historical detail of the medical, cultural, and scientific character of this period, and critique of the scholarly approach to opium in late-nineteenth-century England.