The mycologist Mordecai Cooke writes a popular history of the world’s chief narcotics as they stood in 1860: tobacco and its pipes, opium, hemp, betel, coca, the thorn-apple and the Siberian fly agaric. He gathers travellers’ reports, legends, literary quotations and the customs of many peoples, with commentary on use and abuse.
A curious Victorian survey, valuable as a record of what was known and believed, not as guidance. Download the free EPUB.