ATD SPOILER p 23

[pynchonoid]

SPOILER

I posted this to the pynchonwiki awhile ago, much more
to be said on the subject, too:


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"Scientific exhibit here boys, latest improvements to
the hypodermic syringe and its many uses!"

This carnival barker-style cry on page 23, in the
context of Against the Day's frequent references to
opium smoking, point to an interesting dynamic in the
history of narcotic drug use in the 19th and 20th
centuries.

In their 2004 book, Narcotic Culture: A History of
Drugs in China, published by the University of Chicago
Press, authors Frank Dikotter, Lars Laamann, and Zhou
Xun trace the history of opium use in China, with
particular emphasis on the way that, under the
pressure of foreign anti-opium activists, the
relatively benign practice of opium smoking was
replaced by the far more dangerous and unhealthy
injection of morphine and other synthetic drugs with
hypodermic syringes. The net effect was to take away
an effective medicine (opium) and replace it with much
more addictive substances and a risky new drug
delivery technology, with devastating consequences.

In Narcotic Culture, the authors ask why the syringe
became a popular way of administering drugs in China
late in the 19th century, observing that "not only was
it cheap and effective, but it also encountered
relatively few cultural obstacles since an existing
needle lore endowed the hypodermic with positive
attributes....the almost magical properties attributed
to the syringe in both elite medical culture and
popular drug consumption in modern China."


....from the Amazon.com description of Narcotic
Culture : A History of Drugs in China:

"To this day, the perception persists that China was a
civilization defeated by imperialist Britain's most
desirable trade commodity, opium--a drug that turned
the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip
of dependence. Britain, in an effort to reverse the
damage caused by opium addiction, launched its own
version of the "war on drugs," which lasted roughly
sixty years, from 1880 to World War II and the
beginning of Chinese communism. But, as Narcotic
Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese
history was not the expansion of the drug trade by
Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather
the failure of the British to grasp the consequences
of prohibition." In a stunning historical reversal,
Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann, and Zhou Xun tell this
different story of the relationship between opium and
the Chinese. They reveal that opium actually had few
harmful effects on either health or longevity; in
fact, it was prepared and appreciated in highly
complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing
excessive use. Opium was even used as a medicinal
panacea in China before the availability of aspirin
and penicillin. But as a result of the British effort
to eradicate opium, the Chinese turned from the
relatively benign use of that drug to heroin,
morphine, cocaine, and countless other psychoactive
substances. Narcotic Culture provides abundant
evidence that the transition from a tolerated opium
culture to a system of prohibition produced a "cure"
that was far worse than the disease. Delving into a
history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic Culture is
part revisionist history of imperial and
twentieth-century Britain and part sobering portrait
of the dangers of prohibition."

Retrieved from
"http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hypodermic_syringe"


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