GENDERED BODIES and NERVOUS MINDS: CREATING ADDICTION in AMERICA, 1770-1910 by ELIZABETH ANN SALEM Submitted in Partial Fulfill
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GENDERED BODIES AND NERVOUS MINDS: CREATING ADDICTION IN AMERICA, 1770-1910 by ELIZABETH ANN SALEM Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August 2016 ii CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Elizabeth Ann Salem candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.* Committee Chair Renée M. Sentilles Committee Member Jonathan Sadowsky Committee Member Daniel A. Cohen Committee Member Athena Vrettos Date of Defense February 29, 2016 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. iii For Richard, who believed. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi ABSTRACT viii INTRODUCTION 10 CHAPTER ONE “Addiction” and the Nervous Body, 31 1770-1840 CHAPTER TWO “A Burden and a Curse for Life”: The Early 53 Temperance Movement Explains Addiction, 1770-1840 CHAPTER THREE “The Drunkard, Low as He is, is a Man...”: 90 Addiction during the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1835-1860 CHAPTER FOUR “Mere Bundles of Nerves”: Opium, 122 Nervousness, and the Beginnings of Modern Addiction, 1840-1910 CONCLUSION 166 BIBLIOGRAPHY 176 v LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1: William Hogarth, Gin Lane (1751) 68 FIGURE 2: Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, “The 91 Drunkard’s Progress, From the First Glass to the Grave” (1846) FIGURE 3: “The Death-Bed of Madalina,” from Solon Robinson, 110 Hot Corn (1854) FIGURE 4: Depiction of a Drunkard, from Charles Jewett, 115 Temperance Toy (1840) FIGURE 5: Depiction of a Johnston, Rhode Island, fire, from 118 Charles Jewett, The Youth’s Temperance Lecturer (1841) vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The road to a completed doctorate is often a long one, and long journeys incur multiple debts of gratitude. I first want to thank the members of my dissertation committee for their guidance, support, feedback, and unending kindness. Renée Sentilles chaired my committee and has been my mentor and beloved friend for many years. This project, in fact, began with a class assignment for her Women and Medicine seminar over ten years ago, when I conducted research on a bottle of patent medicine from the Dittrick Medical History Museum’s collection. I also thank her for pushing me to think about the word “crisis” as I revised this dissertation. Jonathan Sadowsky has been a source of great encouragement and support, continually pushing me to take a stand and define why my writing matters. I must thank him for the phrase “substratum of continuity,” because that was everything. Daniel Cohen has helped me through many a theoretical (and chronological) conundrum, and is the provider of the best writing feedback of all time, hands down. Athena Vrettos, who before my defense had only “met” me via email, graciously agreed to serve on my committee regardless and her comments were of immense help as I worked out how to define addiction. My project was supported by an Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship during 2012-2013, and I thank Martha Woodmansee and Daniel Cohen for chairing the seminar. I also thank my fellow dissertation fellows for their support, especially Sarah Rubin, writing partner extraordinaire. I also served as the 2013 History Fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Washington, D.C., and I thank the staff of vii the Resource Center there, particularly Mary Hyde and Debra Scarborough, for their hospitality. I also thank the librarians and staff at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, for letting me spend part of a sweltering summer searching their collection. I also owe a great deal to James Edmonson and Jennifer Nieves at the Dittrick Medical History Center, as well as the staff of the Allen Memorial Medical Library, for their help and research assistance during these many years. The Allen and the Dittrick will always be my medical history “home,” as well as my favorite study space on the CWRU campus. Many thanks also go to my fellow graduate students, past and present, in the History Department, for their friendship and camaraderie, and to my longsuffering friends and family who have had to live with “Beth’s dissertation” for years now. Last but definitely not least, I thank my husband, Richard Salem, and my children, Clare and Richard, for making it possible for me to complete this project, and for always being there with hugs when I emerge from my office! viii Gendered Bodies and Nervous Minds: Creating Addiction in America, 1770-1910 Abstract by ELIZABETH ANN SALEM American concerns about addiction have a long and remarkably consistent history. During the colonial period, Puritan ministers denounced drunkenness as a sin that destroyed the body, stripped individuals of willpower, harmed families and society, plagued racial minorities and the lower classes, and required legal intervention. Despite this, by the early national period, drinking had become an integral part of social and political culture. In response, the temperance movement argued, in similar terms as the Puritans, that alcohol was a social evil that must be eradicated for the moral and political good of the nation. The temperance movement’s critique emerged within the context of changing nineteenth-century medical and literary representations of addictive substances. Physicians saw addiction, as they did other diseases, as the result of a physical crisis. Doctors situated substances like alcohol and opium within a framework that saw bodies as nervous, sensitive, and easily overstimulated or drained. Alongside medical writings, literary depictions of addiction stressed sobriety over the sin and shame of intoxication. Throughout the mid-to-late nineteenth century, cultural criticisms of drunkenness became widespread, sensational, and alarmist. Both medical and popular print writings drew upon ideologies such as domesticity and separate spheres to condemn addiction as disrupting ix the social order by subverting not only male and female social roles, but corresponding racial and class hierarchies. By the early twentieth century, alcohol and opiate consumption continued to come under attack, with physicians, legislators, and opinion makers arguing that these substances harmed physical health, overcame willpower, disrupted all levels of society, led to moral failures, and should be legally prohibited. Their arguments echoed those of the Puritans, suggesting that despite the social, cultural, and medical changes of the nineteenth century, the dynamics of addiction remained stable. To this day, addiction remains an issue that Americans continually “discover,” and it is this cycle of defining addiction as a new problem that impedes the search for effective solutions. 10 INTRODUCTION Role definitions exist on a level of prescription beyond their embodiment in the individuality and behavior of particular historical persons. They exist rather as a formally agreed upon set of characteristics understood by and acceptable to a significant proportion of the population. —Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Charles Rosenberg, “The Female Animal” It can be intensely frustrating, after spending several years steeped in the historical material on American drug and alcohol addiction, to realize that much of the rhetoric regarding addiction has not significantly changed over the past two hundred years. During the years I have written this dissertation, I have witnessed celebrity deaths from drug overdoses and almost continual news stories detailing “epidemics” of heroin and methamphetamine use. I read reports of new strides in scientific research that link addiction to genetics, family emotional histories, or both, and heartbreaking accounts of firsthand drug abuse.1 As a scholar, I know that seemingly new and current phenomena often turn out to have far longer histories than we think. What I did not realize when I began this project is just how consistent of a trajectory addiction has had throughout American history. In April 2015, a blog post appeared that points toward one of the paradoxes surrounding addiction. Heather Sophia Lee, an assistant professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, discussed her research on addiction treatment and observed a 1 For example: George Dvorsky, “Scientists Use Light to Alter Memories of Cokehead Mice,” Gizmodo, last modified February 22, 2016, accessed March 4, 2016, http://gizmodo.com/scientists-use-light-to-alter- memories-of-cokehead-mice-1760548705; Robert Weiss, “Healing Addictions: Does Getting High Equal to Getting Hooked?,” The Huffington Post, accessed March 4, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-weiss/healing-addictions-does-getting-high-equal-to-getting- hooked_b_8965244.html; J.R. Thorpe, “Why Depressed People Have A Harder Time Quitting Smoking,” Bustle, last modified February 22, 2016, accessed March 4, 2016, http://www.bustle.com/articles/142740- why-depressed-people-have-a-harder-time-quitting-smoking. 11 disturbing trend: “the silenced voices of those who struggle with addiction.” Once someone was “labeled an ‘addict,’” Lee wrote, it was “almost impossible for others to see other facets” of that person’s life. To explain this, she theorized that there was a specific “American script” for addiction, which maintained that “addiction is a disease and that the appropriate response is abstinence.” Lee expressed concern that this refusal to understand the full range of addiction experiences meant that addicts’ voices were becoming erased.2 What interests me about Lee’s