Addiction, Intoxicants, and the Humoral Body
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8957149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Phil Withington (0000-0002-1567-5751, University of Sheffield, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 68-90 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x21000194 |
| OpenAlex | W4235787337 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 9 |
Taking the humoral body as its spatial focus, this article considers how medical writers and practitioners engaged with ‘intoxicants’ both in terms of the prescription of medicines and in the conceptualization of compulsive consumption – or what is often styled by modern practitioners as ‘addiction’. Focusing in the first instance on the compilers of vernacular pharmacopoeia – compilations of medical ingredients and techniques – the article argues that just as sugar, tobacco, and especially opiates had a significant and possibly transformative role in everyday physic, so the ‘operation’ of opiates, distilled spirits, and tobacco was crucial in stimulating new thinking about how bodies became substance-dependent. The article also argues, however, that, in order to conceptualize the problem, writers turned to the venerable language of custom rather than the relatively new language of addiction – in particular, the ancient idea of custom as ‘second nature’
Addiction · Alternative medicine · Art · Conceptualization · Consumption (sociology · Developmental psychology · Linguistics · Literature · Materia medica · Psychiatry · Social science · Sociology · Traditional medicine · Transformative learning · Vernacular · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology
The discovery of addiction. Changing conceptions of habitual drunkenness in America.
Why Was “Custom a Second Nature” in Early Modern Medicine
Protestant evangelicals and addiction in early modern English
Medical Revolutions? The Growth of Medicine in England, 1660–1800
Introduction
Tobacco retail licences and state formation in early modern England and Wales
Consumption, retailing, and medicine in early-modern London
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |