The Age of Intoxication by Benjamin Breen - 9780812224986

The Age of IntoxicationOrigins of the Global Drug Trade\nAuthor(s): Benjamin Breen\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, United States\nImprint: University of Pennsylvania Press\nISBN-13: 9780812224986, 978-0812224986\nSynopsis\nEating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an era when the term \""drug\"" encompassed everything from herbs and spices-like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile-to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs were not yet separated into categories-illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal, modern and traditional-and there was no barrier between the drug dealer and the pharmacist.\n Focusing on the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and Angola and on the imperial.