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September 2024 Vol. 62 No. 1

Sometime between 1803 and 1805 a brilliant young pharmacist isolated and extracted morphine crystals from opium seeds, thereby revolutionizing the field of analgesic medicine. His momentous breakthrough, followed by the invention and perfection of the hypodermic syringe in the 1850s, led to an explosion in drug use throughout Europe. During the Third Republic, Paris became the center of consumption for this highly dangerous substance, first hailed as a miracle drug. As Halliwell (history of art, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK) skillfully argues in this perceptive and beautifully illustrated monograph, the historical reality of morphine addiction does not coincide with its depiction in visual culture. Most habitual users were men—many were physicians—but artists almost exclusively focused on the figure of the female addict. In their paintings, lithographs, and caricatures they portrayed morphine users as pleasure-seeking women, sex workers, lesbians, and feminists. Halliwell analyzes this consistent gendering of addiction in the context of the vast social unease facing France after the Franco-Prussian War. She paints a troubling picture of doctors self-medicating and injecting vulnerable patients and artists relying on the shock value of depicting women abusing their bodies. The female figure emerges as a double victim of morphine and the feminization of morphine.

--C. B. Kerr, emerita, Vassar College

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.