‘Drugs’ is a loaded word. For much of the late twentieth-century it was a word synonymous with danger and disorder. To most who grew up in this time drugs were something that appeared the 1960s, and whose use and abuse had caused trouble for western society ever since.

In his new book, Psychonauts, the cultural historian Mike Jay explains how simplistic this reading is. In its earlier meaning ‘drugs’ was simply a catch-all term for medical substances and for as far back as the Scientific Revolution, there has been a clear lineage of their use and of ‘self-experimentation’. In this episode Jay takes Peter back to a particularly vivid year in this long story. 1885.

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In the 1880s a new type of shop was appearing on high streets of Britain and the USA. This was the modern pharmacy. These were different to the apothecaries of old. With their elegant architecture and gleaming windows they seemed like futuristic ‘temples to commercialism’ to people at the time. For those who pushed open the pharmacy doors, even greater enticements awaited inside.

Cocaine Toothache Drops, 1885. (*Wiki Commons*)

By the 1880s customers could buy all sorts of branded pills, lozenges and ‘tabloids’ in these shops. These variously promised to relieve aliments like stomach cramps, sore throats and exhaustion and they were very often marketed under cheerful names like ‘Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup’. But in these bottles was danger as well as relief. Their ingredients were not usually listed, but in them were powerful substances like opium, alcohol and cocaine.

The over-the-counter access people had to such hard drugs seems startling to us today. But in the 1880s people had a very different attitude to these substances. In a world that seemed to be moving at ever higher speed, might a little cocaine be beneficial? At a time when people were increasingly probing the mysteries of the human mind, might hashish or nitrous oxide teach us something new?

Such questions engaged many of the great thinkers of the age. One of these was Sigmund Freud. Early in his career, long before he had established his global reputation in psychoanalysis, Freud was feeling worn down by the pace of life. In response he decided to investigate the energising properties of cocaine. In his study in Vienna he began a series of experiments, using his own body as a piece of scientific apparatus - tracking as best as he could the effects cocaine had.

Freud knew that was he was doing was problematic. Science demanded cold objectivity. But how did this fit with the reality of self-experimentation? This was a problem that had long troubled self-experimenters. In this episode Jay explains how those who came before Freud – those like Isaac Newton and Humphry Davy – had attempted to solve this riddle.

Freud appreciated the dangers, but he also embraced the romance of his pursuit. He referred to himself as a ‘conquistador of the mind’ as he worked on cocaine. And as he undertook his own research in Vienna, other ‘psychonauts’ were having their own experiences with drugs.

Jay tells us about two of these. One was the academic and philosopher William James who, in Massachusetts, was reflection on his experiences of using nitrous oxide. Another was the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson was not working with the scientific rigour of Freud and James; indeed his drug use came in response to his poor health. But, in 1885, in a highly stimulated state of great creativity, wrote the masterpiece, Jekyll and Hyde.

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Mike Jay is the author of Psychnauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind.

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Show Notes

Scene One: January 1885, Vienna - Sigmund Freud publishes his self-experiments with cocaine.

Scene Two: March 31st 1885, Cambridge, Mass - William James in his study, corresponding with Benjamin Blood and Edmund Gurney about nitrous oxide.

Scene Three: September 1885, Bournemouth - RL Stevenson writes Jekyll & Hyde in three days.

Memento: A branded Merck vial of cocaine .

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Mike Jay

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

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About Mike Jay

Mike Jay has written extensively on scientific and medical history and contributes regularly to the London Review of Books and the Wall Street Journal. His previous books on the history of drugs include Mescaline, High Society, and The Atmosphere of Heaven.