Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: morphine

  • From poppy to morphine and heroin

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Among the remedies which it has pleased almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium. – Thomas Sydenham, 1680   The controversial pharmaceutical company Farbenfabriken Bayer AG* had an important role in the development of morphine, heroin, and aspirin,…

  • Dr. Mikhail Bulgakov and morphine

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Centers for Disease Control Public Health Image Library. Public domain. “During the years of war and revolution it was hard to find a hospital without morphine-addicted patients.”1 – Vladimir Gorovoy-Shaltan, physician specialist in addiction medicine   Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was a Russian physician, novelist, and playwright. He earned his…

  • Addiction a century ago

    “Addiction, mainly in the upper classes, was viewed with sympathy. It was not a criminal offense to buy or sell morphine. Freud for a time prescribed cocaine to some of his excitable patients, and we know that Sherlock Holmes, when he was bored, injected himself with a 7% solution. Soon after their accession, the tzar…

  • Memories of a West Virginia coal camp

    Calvin Kunin Columbus, Ohio, United States   Coal town, Eastern Kentucky. Photo by Don Sniegowski. March 21, 2018. Via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. This is a brief account of my experience as a physician at a coal mining camp in rural West Virginia. It is based on my memory of events that took place almost…

  • Ella’s addiction: the story of a mother and morphine

    Lisa Mulleneaux New York, New York, United States   Ella Quinlan O’Neill in the early 1880s. Courtesy of Yale University Library Doctors today are relearning lessons from a century ago when overprescription of opioids created an epidemic of addicts, most of whom were upper-class or middle-class women. Eugene O’Neill’s mother, Mary “Ella” Quinlan O’Neill, was…

  • Poppy power

    John Graham-Pole Gainesville, Florida, United States   Dr. Graham-Pole with cancer patient, Bridget. At the time of the photo, Bridget had life-threatening cancer requiring opioids, and is now a successful artist. Author photo. The poppy’s juice . . .brings the sleep to dear Mama — Sara Coleridge, Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children   In…

  • On being a spousal caregiver

    William Black Knoxville, Tennessee, United States   When I was 55 years old, and had been in the private practice of Internal Medicine and Nephrology for 22 years, my wife Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time of her diagnosis she already had widespread bony metastases. Five weeks later, I came home one…

  • Illuminating addiction: morphinomania in fin-de-siècle visual culture

    Natalia Vieyra Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States     Paul-Albert Besnard, Morphinomanes ou Le Plumet, 1887 Etching and drypoint, plate: 9 5/16 x 14 inches (23.75 x 35.6 cm) Sheet: 12 5/8 x 17 5/8 inches (32.1 x 44.8 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art Purchased with the SmithKline Beckman Corporation Fund, 1980 The etchings of Paul-Albert…