Bending minds, building medicine

摘要

From drinking espresso to shooting heroin, the human impulse towards altered mental states is universal. Now two books explore the history of individual and social attitudes to psychotropic drugs, and the science of pharmacology. In Demons, science historian Virginia Berridge focuses on drug cultures, primarily in Britain and to a lesser extent in the United States, Europe and Asia. She chronicles the consumption of opium, alcohol, tobacco, cocaine and cannabis, from the nineteenth century onwards, and examines attempts at official control. Berridge points out that a drug's acceptability to mainstream society fluctuates more owing to social and cultural trends than to medical knowledge.periodic reclassification of drugs is "not a rational' process", she concludes.