4. Fresco detail from the garden room of the House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii, depicting opium poppies growing with roses on an ornamental frame. 5. The medical school at Salerno, showing the arrival of Robert, Duke of Normandy, seeking treatment for wounds sustained during the First Crusade, 1099. 6. The Mercator projection, as published by Gerardus Mercator in Duisburg, 1596.
7. Thomas Sydenham, who created the first commercially successful and widely available preparation of laudanum.
8. Paracelsus, who mixed exotic ingredients such as musk and ambergris to create the mysterious preparation ‘laudanum’. 9. The Engel-Apotheke of Friedrich Jacob Merck, Darmstadt, shown here c.1790.
10. Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey. He was a long-term user of laudanum and died in his home in Berkeley Square, London, after an overdose. 11. ‘The Stacking Room’ of the British East India Company’s opium factory, Patna, India, c.1820. 12. The British East India Company’s iron steam ship Nemesis, with boats from the Sulphur, Lame, and Starling, destroying Chinese war junks in January 1841, by E. Duncan, 1843.
13. Hong Kong, c.1850, depicting the early settlement and the harbour. 14. Signing of the Treaty of Tientsin, 1858.
15. Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, trade card, 1887.
16. Two examples of Alexander Wood’s hypodermic syringe, the first in a chased silver case with glass barrel and silver fittings; the second in a leatherette case, with glass barrel and ivory fittings. Latter part of the nineteenth century.
17. A scene in an opium den depicting a Chinese man offering a pipe to an American woman. The caption read, ‘He often made an honest dollar teaching American women how to smoke “hop”’. 1900. 18. Studio portrait of Fee Lee Wong, his wife, six children and their maid (standing behind them), 1889– 1907. 19. The molecular structure of diacetylmorphine.
20. Songs of the Temperance Movement and Prohibition (M. Gray, 1874). 21. Advertisement for Bayer Pharmaceutical Products by mail order, c.1900. 22. The Battle of Manila, the first and largest battle fought during the Philippine-American War, was fought on February 4–5 1899 between 19,000 Americans and 15,000 Filipinos.
23. Du Yuesheng, Green Gang mobster and Shanghai godfather (1887–1951), as a young man. 24. The opium man of Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur.
2 5. M u g s h o t o f ‘ L u c k y ’ L u c i a n o a s t a k e n b y t h e N Y P D o n h i s a r r e s t f o r r u n n i n g a p r o s t i t u t i o n r a c k e t i n 1 9 3 6.
26. Frank Lucas wearing a chinchilla coat and hat outside Madison Square Garden before the Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier fight in New York.
27. A shell-shocked, wounded marine being bandaged in a muddy jungle during OP Prairie, South Vietnam.
28. First Lady Nancy Reagan speaking at a ‘Just Say No’rally, Los Angeles, 1987. 29. An ambulance waits to receive a casualty from a Chinook helicopter at Camp Bastion, April 2011. 30. US Marines walk through a poppy field in Helmand Province, 2011.
31. OxyContin tablets at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vermont, 2013.
MILK OF PARADISE Lucy Inglis is a historian and novelist, a speaker, and occasionally a television presenter and voice on the radio. She is the creator of the award-winning Georgian London blog and her book of the same name was shortlisted for the History Today Longman Prize. She is also the author of two novels for young adults, including City of Halves, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Branford Boase Award, and Crow Mountain. She lives in London.
‘Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans – our willingness to experiment; our ability to become addicts; our pursuit of money. This book tells us more than about opium; it tells us about ourselves’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads ‘As Lucy Inglis recounts in her sweeping new history of opium, the tension between the substance’s medicinal virtue and its dangers is ancient . . . [She] untangles these contradictions with gusto . . . a deeply researched and captivating book’ The Economist ‘A sweeping international history of opium . . . absorbing’ Radio Times ‘Magisterial’ Nature
Also by Lucy Inglis Georgian London
First published 2018 by Macmillan This electronic edition published 2019 by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com ISBN 978-1-4472-8610-3 Copyright © Lucy Inglis 2018 Cover image: Florilegius/Alamy Cover design: Ami Smithson, Picador Art Department The right of Lucy Inglis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Illustrations by Hemesh Alles Map artwork by ML Design Visit www.picador.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.