Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century

by Mike Jay

The text of Emperors of Dreams has been revised, updated and with new material added. It paints a fresh and startling picture both of today's illicit drugs and of the nineteenth century in general.

'It is a fascinating book... Jay is excellent is on the emergence of medical science as a social force.' W.N. Herbert in Scotland on Sunday

'As well as exploding the fantasy that a society without drugs used to exist, Jay clarifies the question of why so many of them were outlawed...in the process, he tells a series of fascinating stories about the first individuals to describe their effects, and how their use spread,' Peter Carty in Time Out

'Intelligent, witty, cogent and a bit pissed off, Emperors of Dreams is one of the best books on drugs I have come across, and should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned with drug legalisation.' Julian Keeling in The New Statesman

'The changing status of the coca leaf is one of the many stories told by Mike Jay in his engaging survey of drug use in the 19th century.... Fear of pleasure, as Jay shows in this splendid book, is perhaps the most powerful motive in the hysterical anti-drug rhetoric that has created the mess we are in today.' Joan Smith in The Independent on Sunday

'Meticulously researched, compulsively readable and unfailingly fascinating...more than just an inebriating travelogue of days gone by, Jay's book is important in its even-handed, dispassionate and intelligent discussion of such incendiary topics as decriminalisation and legalisation. His closing chapter on temperance and prohibition is perhaps the most level-headed prose ever written on the subject.' Gary Lachman in The Fortean Times

'An excellent book... it states with precision as well as poetry the nature of the drug experience.' Pick of the Week by Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian

'Mike Jay has built a necessary bridge between scholarship and the illicit enthusiasm of drug culture...He does not disdain conventional drug history, but has absorbed it into a work that is literary in the broadest sense - rich in sociology and politics as well as in poetry and letters...Jay relishes his storytelling, and keeps a steady hand on his source material. Emperors of Dreams is a book for aficionados, who savour not only good writing but also the recollection, in tranquillity, of altered states.' Marek Kohn in The Independent

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Drugs, Science, Medicine, Sociology

254 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

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Reviews

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Jay’s Emperors of Dreams (Dedalus Books, 2000) is a fascinating look at drugs in the 19th century. It's yet another example of the popular perception of the Victorian era as repressive and paternalistic being quite wrong. For most of the 19th century most western governments adopted the very sensible and (by today’s standards) amazingly enlightened policy of considering that if you wanted to take drugs it was your own business and that it was not the place of government to interfere. At the beginning of the 19th century the only drugs available were tobacco, alcohol, caffeine and opium. Over the course of the century new drugs, such as nitrous oxide, appeared. New derivatives of older drugs (such as morphine) also appeared, and other drugs previously more or less unknown (such as cannabis and various plant hallucinogens) were introduced to the European world. And the drug hysteria slowly started to build, fuelled partly by the medical profession (anxious to increase and consolidate its growing power) and more particularly fuelled by racism. Drugs were seen as an insidious plot by the inferior races to bring about the degeneration of the white race, and they were seen as a means by which dastardly foreigners such as the Chinese could take revenge on Europe for their humiliations suffered at the hands of European colonialism. Racism was an even bigger factor in the United States, with ludicrous fears of black “coke fiends” menacing the purity of white womanhood, and with cannabis seen as a drug that would turn Mexicans into sex-crazed maniacs who would also endanger white women. Indeed racism remains a major factor in US drug policy. The chapters on drugs that are now more or less forgotten or regarded merely as anaesthetics, such as ether and nitrous oxide, are especially interesting. A very thought-provoking and highly entertaining book which I highly recommend.

[Essie Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and very well written indeed.