Opiologia

When I was writing The Cartoon Guide to Recreational Drugs I scoured the local libraries and bookstores looking for useful and interesting historical works. Opiologia• is one of my sources.

The parts I generally took notes from were either about the drugs themselves or the prohibition of drugs. You’ll find the information garnered from these books throughout the Prohibition Politics section of this site. It will also have informed some of my own postings stored in the older Prohibition Politics archive.

If you find this information useful, you will want to search out the books themselves to read the text in context. All of the books here are at least moderately interesting.

Jerry

Written by Angelo Sala and translated by Tho. Bretner, M.M., 1618, London.

Preface:

“…a man may travel into a hundred cities in Christendom where the Physicians neither use it nor make any more account of it then of a thing altogether strange and unknown and of no use in the world.”

“Let us put the case that this my Treatise were good for nothing else but to enlarge and make known the name of Laudanum among the rude multitude to give them occasion (when time and opportunity shall serve) to inquire and demand for it of their Physicians, or of others which shall have the same by them, whereby they may be assisted and fortified against sundry dangerous accidents, which by no other means can be so quickly, safely, or easily avoided;”