Freud on Cocaine, Opium Ball Boost ‘High Society’ Drugs Exhibit
A bottle of Bayer Company heroin, from circa 1900. Heroin was sold over the counter until the mid-1920s in the U.K. The sample is on view in the exhibition ''High Society'' at London's Wellcome Collection. Source: Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain via Bloomberg
Opium Ball
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain/Wellcome Collection via Bloomberg
An opium ball from India, 19th century, from the collections of the Science Museum in London. The volleyball-sized sphere is on display in ''High Society,'' an exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection.
An opium ball from India, 19th century, from the collections of the Science Museum in London. The volleyball-sized sphere is on display in ''High Society,'' an exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection. Source: Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain/Wellcome Collection via Bloomberg
Spider Webs
Wellcome Library via Bloomberg
Illustrations of webs produced by spiders that were administered different drugs as part of a NASA experiment. The spider on the left was given Benzedrine, the spider in the middle took caffeine, and the spider on the right was given cannabis. The images were redrawn from the British Medical Journal in 1993 and are on show in an exhibition titled ''High Society'' at London's Wellcome Collection.
Illustrations of webs produced by spiders that were administered different drugs as part of a NASA experiment. The spider on the left was given Benzedrine, the spider in the middle took caffeine, and the spider on the right was given cannabis. The images were redrawn from the British Medical Journal in 1993 and are on show in an exhibition titled ''High Society'' at London's Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Library via Bloomberg
Until a century or so ago in Europe, you could buy cocaine and heroin over the counter, drink absinthe as an aperitif, and smoke cannabis cigarettes anywhere.
Getting high was deemed appropriate, beneficial, and even cool centuries before the hippies came along. The “High Society” exhibition at London’s Wellcome Collection (through Feb. 27, 2011) tells the story.
The show’s first display will set off any cop’s alarm bells. There’s a cannabis bong, a heroin user’s kit, and a homemade crack pipe: The plastic water bottle is capped with punctured foil, and fitted with a ballpoint-pen tube that the crack would be smoked through.
Then come much older, though no less illicit, displays -- real samples that required controlled drugs licenses from the U.K. Home Office to be put on view.
On show are a bottle of “Cocain 20%” from a 1900 English dental kit, a medical dose of heroin dated around 1900, and the biggest haul of all: a 19th-century ball of Indian opium, which curators say is enough for as many as 10,000 doses.
The volleyball-sized, dung-like sphere is the kind that the British shipped to China in the mid-19th century, sparking the Opium Wars. It’s encased in two vitrines, not one, to prevent the aroma from wafting up visitors’ nostrils.
Nearby is proof of just how long ago people were taking drugs, be it for pleasure or for pain relief. A 6th-century B.C. Babylonian tablet recommends the plant “qunnabu” for a gynecological condition; it’s among the earliest written pieces of evidence of cannabis for medical use.
Inca Nobility
The Incas considered drugs a status symbol. The silver statuette of a male deity from 14th- or 15th-century Peru has bulging cheeks: Chewing coca leaves was a mark of nobility.
Until they were banned in the early 20th century, drugs were taken by great minds, too. In an 1884 pamphlet (“Ueber Coca”), psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud praises the medical uses of cocaine; his personal copy is here. The Sherlock Holmes novel “The Sign of Four,” here in an 1890 edition, opens with the detective shooting up with a 7 percent solution of cocaine: Holmes also likes morphine. His creator Arthur Conan Doyle later weaned the character off drugs as public opinion shifted.
The strongest of the exhibition’s newer sections, “Self- Experimentation,” has two 1950s ink drawings done under the influence of mescaline by the French writer-artist Henri Michaux. Minute and densely detailed, they seem depictions of a crowded ant colony.
Mayhew on Mescaline
Another one-off mescaline user was Christopher Mayhew, a member of the British parliament who was filmed taking it in a water glass for a 1955 documentary that never aired.
The well-groomed Mayhew, hands neatly clasped over one knee, never loses his poise or impeccable manner. Yet he becomes less coherent, and is unable to repeat a specific sentence or do subtractions. “I can’t concentrate quite so well,” he says. He then describes a plain red curtain as having “the most extraordinary gradations of mauve, and lights.”
“High Society” is by no means exhaustive, yet has much to grab the attention, and puts drug taking in an intriguing historical perspective. Visitors can share their own experiences anonymously, via the computer in the last room.
“High Society” is at Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE. Information: +44-20-7611-2222 or http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions.aspx
(Farah Nayeri writes for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer on the story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Beech at mbeech@bloomberg.net.
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