Different Peoples, Different Inebriations: The Recognition of Different Cultures of Intoxication in Early Modern English Medicine

Abstract

In early modern Europe, the global dimensions of the drug trade and the introduction of new substances contributed to the development of new cultures of intoxication. This process was particularly evident in England, where a new intoxication culture emerged from the recognition of how different substances produced similar reactions. Medical travel literature provides a critical source for examining alternative methods of drug consumption in the non-Western world in this period: culturally embedded practices like Turkish opium eating or Native American tobacco smoking became significant benchmarks for comparing with Western habits of alcohol consumption. This article argues that the early modern Western medical community relied on comparisons of intoxication in other contexts in an effort to describe its own culturally embedded practices of alcohol intoxication.