Category Archives: Drugs and alcohol

1625: English invasion thwarted by a booze up

booze
Edward Cecil’s failed Cadiz expedition… well it seemed a good idea at the time.

In 1625, two English military commanders – George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and Sir Edward Cecil – sought royal approval for a war against Spain. A successful campaign, they told Charles I, would weaken the Spanish Empire and revive the glory of 1588, when the English repelled the Armada. Villiers and Cecil also hoped to line their pockets by plundering Spanish ships returning from the Americas laden with cash and cargo. Their plan was backed by Charles I but not parliament, which was unwilling and probably unable to provide financial support.

In the summer of 1625, Cecil moved to Devon to assemble his invasion force but was plagued by a shortage of funds and other difficulties. He secured almost 120 English and Dutch ships but many were poorly maintained. Cecil’s land force consisted of 15,000 men, most of whom were pressed into service in and around Plymouth. Cecil’s expedition was also poorly stocked: he was able to obtain provisions for scarcely a fortnight abroad.

The fleet sailed on October 5th 1625 but returned the following day after striking bad weather. It sailed again two days later but suffered damage in heavy weather off the Spanish coast. The English encountered several Spanish ships filled with cargo but dithering, allowed them to escape.

The expedition landed near Cadiz on October 24th but Cecil, having noticed the city’s fortifications, abandoned his plans to attack it. Instead, Cecil marched his men in the opposite direction. With night approaching he allowed his invasion to stop at village in the wine-producing region of Andalusia. Unfortunately for Cecil, this village housed a large quantity of the local product. His ‘army’ quickly fell apart, thanks to:

“…the misgovernment of the soldiers who, by the avarice or negligence of their commanders, were permitted to fill themselves so much with the wine they found in the cellars and other places they plundered, that they became more like beasts than men… if the Spaniards had had good intelligence they might have all been cut off.”

Cecil’s men were so hopelessly drunk that their officers abandoned plans for capturing major cities – or indeed smaller ones. The soldiers were herded back onto the ships. For a time they sailed aimlessly along the Spanish coast, looking for treasure ships to plunder. But poor hygiene and lack of supplies soon took their toll on the men, who began to die, “many each hour”.

In mid-November, the expedition was abandoned and the ships, scattered at sea, began to limp back to England. Cecil was the last to return: his own ship was blown off course and became lost, landing on the south coast of Ireland in mid December. His return ended one of the worst executed military campaigns in English history.

Source: Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England &c., 1684. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1852: Drunk zookeeper dies from cobra bite to the nose

In October 1852, Edward Horatio Girling, an employee at London Zoo, died after being bitten by a five-foot cobra. A post mortem on Girling’s corpse showed the cobra had bitten him five times on the nose. One of these bites had penetrated to the nasal bone and bled profusely.

After the bite, Girling was rushed to hospital by cab, a journey that took 20 minutes. While in the cab his head swelled to “an enormous size” and his face turned black. Once at hospital, Girling was given artificial respiration and electrical shocks. Neither was successful and he died 35 minutes after arrival.

cobra
A report on the inquest into Barling’s slithery demise
After ascertaining how Girling died, an inquest investigated how he had come to be bitten in the first place. Early press reports put it down to a homicidal serpent. One suggested the cobra had bitten its victim him with “murderous intent”, another had it lunging from the shadows while Girling was delivering food to the enclosure.

It did not take long for the inquest to discover that Girling was responsible for his own demise. One of Girling’s work colleagues, Edward Stewart the hummingbird keeper, testified at the inquest. He claimed to be passing by the snake enclosure with a basket of larks when he saw Girling inside. Apparently showing off, Girling picked up the ‘Bocco’, a mildly venomous colubrid snake, by its neck. According to Stewart:

“…Girling then said ‘Now for the cobra!’ Deceased took the cobra out of the case and put it inside his waistcoat, it crawled round from the right side and came out at the left side… Girling drew it out and was holding the cobra between the head and middle of the body when it made a dart at his face.”

Stewart and other witnesses also testified that Girling was drinking ample quantities of gin at breakfast time. A zookeeper named Baker told the inquest “he believed that the deceased was intoxicated”. It was also noted that Girling had little if any experience with venomous snakes; he had only recently started working at the zoo after employment with the railways. Unsurprisingly the coroner found that Girling had died as a “result of his own rashness whilst in a state of intoxication”.

Source: The Daily News, London, October 23rd 1852. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. This content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1888: A week on the booze saves man from snakebite

In May 1888, a young New Jersey stonecutter, William Gore, was bitten by a rattlesnake near Fort Lee. Having spied a rattlesnake ahead, Gore reached down for a large stone with which to kill it – only to be struck on the hand by a second rattler lurking nearby.

Gore’s brother took him to the local physician, whose treatment was to keep his patient drunk for several days:

“The first thing Dr Dunning did was to give him a dose of whisky, one ounce and a half. This is about three times as much as an ordinary drink of whisky. Gore was put to bed in hospital… The wound was dressed in ammonia and the arm was bandaged… Whisky has been frequently administered in large doses. The object is to keep him continually drunk. He lies in a stupor nearly all the time. Once in a great while, he is able to talk coherently.”

Newspapers reported that Gore was close to death and had received deathbed visits from family members and a Catholic priest. According to later reports, however, Gore made a full recovery:

“William Gore, who was bitten by a rattlesnake at Fort Lee a week ago and has been dosed with whiskey ever since, will be out of the hospital in a few days. Moral: You can be bitten by snakes and cured by whiskey, but you can’t be bitten by whiskey and cured by snakes.”

Sources: The Sun, May 22nd 1888; Fort Worth Daily Gazette, May 28th 1888. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1652: Coffee prevents gout, scury and “miscarryings”

In 1652 Pasqua Rosee, a London coffee house, published what is probably history’s first advertisement for coffee. According to the Rosee’s handbill, coffee is best taken mid-afternoon; the user should avoid food for an hour before and after. It should be drunk in half-pint servings, “as hot as can possibly be endured” without “fetching the skin off the mouth or raising any blisters”.

Among the claims made about the medicinal qualities of coffee:

“It forecloses the orifice of the stomach.. it is very good to help digestion… it quickens the spirits and makes the heart lightsome. It is good against sore eyes… good against the headache… deflexion of rheumas… consumptions and cough of the lungs. It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy… It is very good to prevent miscarryings in child-bearing women. It is a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds or the like. It will prevent drowsiness and make one fit for business… for it will hinder sleep for three or four hours.

Source: Pasqua Rosee handbill, Cornhill, 1652. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1896: Girl, 7, escapes penalty for swearing, drunkenness

In January 1896, a Miss Suider appeared before the Magistrates Court in Albany, Western Australia, charged with using indecent language in public.

According to a press report, the defendant said almost nothing during the hearing. On the instruction of her stepfather, she later offered an apology. The stepfather asked for the magistrate’s understanding, advising that the defendant had “made herself drunk” on homemade wine while unsupervised. Miss Suider was only seven years old:

“The language used by the child and heard by several others was said to be filthy in the extreme… His Honour had a wish to convey the child to the reformatory but instead discharged her into the custody of her step-father, who advised the court that he was headed into the bush. The magistrate warned the step-father and mother that it would be they held to account with a large fine, if the child was brought before him again.”

Source: The Australian Advertiser (Albany, WA), February 3rd 1896. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1909: Doc’s asthma cure: tobacco, coffee, booze and cocaine

In 1909, Dr William Lloyd published a brief essay on asthma in the British Medical Journal. According to Dr Lloyd, asthma was “essentially a nervous disease” caused by nasal irritation and involuntary spasms of the bronchial muscles.

Contrary to popular opinion, he wrote, asthma could be easily treated. An attack could be subdued with a dose of ipecacuanha powder, a plant extract that causes vomiting. Some of Dr Lloyd’s other suggested treatments were less creative:

“The use of pipe tobacco smoking acts admirably in some patients… One of the commonest and most effective remedies is coffee. It acts better if given very hot and strong and without sugar and milk. Alcohol, chloroform and cocaine are remedies of value [for] checking an attack, however severe.”

Dr Lloyd continued to write on asthma, hay fever and other respiratory conditions until the 1930s. In 1925 his practice was flooded with patients after the Daily Mail claimed that Dr Lloyd had discovered a permanent cure for hay fever. The British Medical Association deemed this to be advertising, a practice against its charter, so Lloyd’s name was temporarily removed from the register. His hay fever ‘cure’ was also discredited.

Source: Dr William Lloyd, “Asthma: Its causation and treatment” in British Medical Journal, vol.1, January 16th 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1898: Doctor sees zoo animals during hashish trial

In March 1898, a Californian physician, writing anonymously for the Los Angeles Herald, described his evaluation of popular pain relief therapies. Having long suffered from back and muscular pain, the author tried galvanism (mild electrical shocks) and hypnotism, both of which afforded him some pain-free moments.

Lastly, he experimented by consuming large doses of hashish, which for safety was carried out in the presence of another doctor and two nurses. The substance was very effective at relieving pain, he noted, but had some significant side effects:

“For seven hours after the drug was administrated I was convulsed with laughter. I laughed incontinently, loudly, boisterously… The sensation was almost continuous, yielding at times to a feeling of dreadful seriousness that ended in tears, and then again breaking out… in a flood of laughter.”

And in the second phase, he began hallucinating:

“This was also most amusing… One faithful nurse had been metamorphosed into a monkey, another into a bear; my good doctor was as fine a specimen of a lion as ever was beheld in Van Amburg’s show… One of my bed posts seemed to extend quite to the ceiling while the other disappeared wholly from view. The clock on the mantel, once I looked at it, appeared to be nine feet in height.”

Source: Los Angeles Herald, March 14th 1898. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1675: English sailors get high on cannabis in India

Thomas Bowrey (died 1713) was an English mariner, merchant and ship-owner. As a young sailor, Bowrey made many trips along the spice route, traveling to Africa, India and south-east Asia.

Bowrey was an also an avid writer and a student of foreign lands, cultures and customs. His travel diaries, spanning 1669 to 1679, were discovered and published at the beginning of the 20th century. These papers describe an incident in the mid-1670s when Bowrey and “eight or ten” of his men were on leave in Bengal.

While there they sampled some of the local bhang, or cannabis-infused water. According to Bowrey’s diary, he and his shipmates each paid sixpence for a pint of bhang, which they guzzled down behind locked doors:

“It soon took its operation upon most of us… One of them sat himself down upon the floor and wept bitterly all afternoon; the other, terrified with fear, did put his head into a great jar and continued in that posture for four hours or more… four or five lay upon the carpets highly complimenting each other in high terms… One was quarrelsome and fought with one of the wooden pillars of the porch until he had little skin upon the knuckles of the fingers.”

Bowrey himself “sat sweating for the space of three hours in exceeding measure”. He described bhang as a “bewitching” substance; anyone who uses it for a month or two cannot give it up “without much difficulty”.

Source: Thomas Bowrey, Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay of Bengal 1669-79, published 1905. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1869: Cure opium addiction with liquor, morphine and marijuana

The Pharmacy Act, passed by the British parliament in 1868, placed restrictions on the manufacture and sale of deadly poisons and dangerous drugs. One of the main targets of this legislation was opium addiction.

Imported opium poppies were cheap and readily available, making it a profitable product for chemists, pharmaceutical companies and backyard operators. The easy availability of opium also turned thousands of Britons into addicts. Opium-related deaths numbered between 140 and 200 each year. This figure included dozens of babies and infants, who were regularly doped with over-the-counter syrups, cordials and teething gels laced with opium.

In 1869, Doctor Joyce of Rolvenden wrote to The Lancet, remarking that the withdrawal of opium from the open market was causing its own problems among his opium-eating patients:

“The sudden withdrawal of the drug [has] caused overwhelming sickness, complete prostration of body and mind, severe rigours, great loathing of food, an utter inability to sleep, constant purging…”

According to the doctor these withdrawal symptoms are difficult to treat, however he has achieved some good results by prescribing:

“..a liberal supply of brandy, the use of suppositories of morphine and the cautious exhibition of Indian hemp [marijuana].”

Source: Letter from Dr Joyce to The Lancet, vol.1, January 1869. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1917: Judge counts 2,700-plus Coca Cola fiends in Georgia

By the outbreak of World War I, the push for a nationwide ban on alcohol in the United States was in full swing. The American prohibition movement was the sum of many parts, including various religious, women’s and temperance groups.

Prohibition may also have enjoyed the financial backing of Coca Cola. During debates on the floor of the US Senate in early 1917 James Edgar Martine, the junior Senator from New Jersey, claimed the prohibition movement was being bankrolled by:

“…the splendid wealth acquired through the manufacture of the decoction known as Coca Cola… The owner [of this company] lives in a princely home in Atlanta… there is a lobby there and $50,000 has been put up for the purposes of maintaining the Coca Cola interests… to shut people off from other beverages and hence make them resort to their drinks.”

Coca Cola was itself invented to dodge Atlanta by-laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks. Despite its cocaine content and narcotic effects, Coca Cola was permitted to be sold as a medicinal tonic rather than an intoxicant. Cocaine was removed from Coca Cola around 1903 and replaced with strong levels of caffeine but many still considered it a stupefying drink with potential dangers to the welfare of those who consumed it.

According to Judge Stark, Coca Cola addiction was responsible for serious social problems in the state of Georgia:

“A half dozen reputable physicians have stated that there are over 300 girls in Atlanta that are Coca Cola fiends and nervous wrecks… Coca Cola and such drinks not only make physical wrecks out of our men but destroy the physical welfare of our women and children and make nervous wrecks of them. There are over 2,700 known Coca Cola fiends in this state, and if all could be numbered it would amount to over 5,000.”

Whether because of prohibition or canny marketing or both, Coca Cola sales boomed over the next decade. In 1920, the company churned out almost 19 million gallons of the drink and generated $US32.2 million in sales. By the end of 1921 there were more than 1,000 Coca Cola bottling plants across the US and the product was available at almost every soda bar in the country.

Source: Logan Republican, Utah, March 6th 1917. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.