"The Narcotics We Indulge In" – a view from the 1850s

On a recent visit to Scotney Castle, I discovered a copy of James Johnston's The Chemistry of Common Life among the many books in the Library [1]. It is an interesting book that gives descriptions of the physiology of organisms and has several sections on narcotics and their use by humans. Johnston had written on this topic earlier and his two articles published in August and November 1853 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine were re-printed in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs in 1985 and 1986 [2,3]. He gives us insights into the worldwide use of narcotics up to the 1850s.

Johnson was a Scot who graduated in Philosophy from the University of Glasgow and then pursued a school teaching career in Durham from 1825 to1830 [4]. Having made a successful marriage, he was able to leave teaching and pursue his interest in Chemistry, including studying with Berzelius in Sweden, and this resulted in his being appointed the foundation Reader in Chemistry and Mineralogy at the University of Durham [4]. It was in the field of Agricultural Chemistry that he was best known and his research work was recognised by Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1837 [5]. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Knight writes that:

Johnston became a successful popular lecturer and writer.. ..His Chemistry of Common Life.. ..was a classic popularization of up-to-date science.

Chapters in The Chemistry of Common Life [6] on the fermentation of alcohol, and its subsequent distillation, are followed by a section on "The Narcotics We Indulge In" (based on the articles in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine). Johnston provides a wide-ranging review of the world-wide use of "narcotic indulgences", the most important of which are mentioned in his concluding comments:

Siberia has its fungus [Amanita muscaria] – Turkey, India , and China, their opium – Persia, India, and Turkey, with all Africa, from Morocco to the Cape of Good Hope, and even the Indians of Brazil, have their hemp and haschisch – India, China and the Eastern Archipelago their betel-nut and betel-pepper – The Polynesia islands their daily ava [from the ground roots of Piper methysticum] – Peru and Bolivia their long-used coca – New Granada and the Himalayas their red and common thorn-apples [Datura sanguinea and D. stramonium] – Asia and America, and all the world, we may say, their tobacco – the Florida Indians their emetic holly [Ilex vomitoria] – Northern Europe and America their ledums and sweet gale – the Englishman and German their hop, and the Frenchman his lettuce.

All these narcotics come from fungi or plants and most are familiar to us, perhaps with the exception of the use of lettuce; the sap of some types of lettuce being dried and powdered and used in a similar way, and with similar properties, to opium. Johnston describes tobacco as being consumed world-wide in the 1850s, either smoked or taken as snuff, and other narcotics were widely available: laudanum, for example, consisted of 10% powdered opium in 20 – 50% alcohol and was used as a painkiller and cough medicine, some writers and artists also taking it for the effect on their powers of creativity. The main psychoactive constituent of opium is morphine and it was known to be addictive – Coleridge was a well-known addict whose difficulties are described by Johnston.

"The Narcotics We Indulge In" concludes with a summary that adopts a high moral tone, as befits someone from the Scottish Kirk tradition:

..there exists a universal craving in the whole human race for indulgences of a narcotic kind. This is founded in the nature of man.. ..this craving assumes in every country a form which is more or less special to that country. It is modified most by climate, less by race, and least, though still very sensibly, by opportunity.. ..among every people the form of craving special to the whole undergoes subsidiary modifications among individuals. These are determined by individual constitution first, and next by opportunity..

..I may remark that, with the enticing descriptions before him, which the history of these narcotics presents, we cannot wonder that man, whose constant search on earth is after happiness, and who, too often disappointed here, hopes and longs, and strives to fit himself for happiness hereafter – we cannot wonder that he should at times be caught by the tinselly glare of this corporeal felicity, and should yield himself to habits which, though exquisitely delightful at first, lead him finally both to torture of body and to misery of mind; - that, debilitated by the excesses to which it provokes, he should sink more and more under the influence of a mere drug, and become at last a slave to its tempting seductions. We are indeed feeble creatures, and small in bodily strength, when a grain of haschisch can conquer, or a few drops of laudanum lay us prostrate; but how much weaker in  mind when, knowing the evils they lead us to, we are unable to resist the fascinating temptations of these insidious drugs!

Although Johnston admits that the use of tobacco and opiates had become global in the 1850s, he would probably have been surprised at the widespread use of drugs that is prevalent today and the various forms that they take. Clearly one difference is the development of synthetic drugs like LSD and amphetamines that are produced in chemical laboratories, rather than directly from fungi or plants. One aspect that would not have surprised him is the money involved in the production and selling of narcotics, as he remarks on the world-wide size of this industry in The Chemistry of Common Life.

The widespread use of "narcotic indulgences" for religious purposes affects whole societies, but why do some of us become addicted to narcotics, knowing that they can be destructive to physical and mental health? It is hard not to adopt Johnston's position when addressing this question, as we experiment with drugs, feel pressured by peers, want to enhance our creativity, escape boredom, or indulge for many other reasons. Apart from the change in the range of narcotics available, there are few differences between the 1850s and the 21st Century in our need for what we now call recreational drugs. Does that come as a surprise?

 

[1]  http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/scotney-castle-and-eminent-natural.html

[2] James F. W. Johnston (1985) The narcotics we indulge in. Part I. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 17: 191-199.

[3] James F. W. Johnston (1985) The narcotics we indulge in. Part II. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 18: 131-150.

[4] Graeme Wynn (1985) Johnston, James Finlay Weir. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Volume 8. Toronto and Québec, University of Toronto and Université Laval.

[5] David Knight (2004) Johnston, James Finlay Weir (1796-1855). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press

[6] James F. W. Johnston (1854) The Chemistry of Common Life. New York, D. Appleton and Company.

The best coffee?

Like many people, I enjoy drinking coffee. My preference is for lightly roasted beans and I don't mind whether the coffee is made using a French press, a filter, or a commercial coffee machine. 

World-wide demand is such that many countries now produce coffee beans and the resultant crops vary in quality, depending on whether they are grown at altitude, as an understory in forests, in intensive plantations, or by other farming methods. Coffea arabica, the most widespread coffee plant, comes originally from north-east Africa and its global spread has brought problems, with much effort being given to controlling coffee borer beetles and other pests. Spraying of the crop is sometimes needed as there is often no natural biological control of the pests, and monoculture provides optimal conditions for pest transmission.

Ripe "cherries" are red, those that are over-ripe are dull brown-red and those that are yet to ripen are green (see above), so hand picking is often the best method of collection. The bean that we roast is contained within the cherry and, in the picture below, a cherry has been halved and the two beans it contains partly removed. The pulp and mucilage that surrounds each are obvious, as is the white parchment-like coating of the bean itself.

Coffee beans only develop their flavour upon roasting so they must first be extracted from the cherry.  As in many fruits, the soft pulp evolved to protect the bean (seed) from drying, or abrasion, and the mucilage layer provides an extra barrier that also allows easy penetration of the shoot when the seed germinates. Mucilage has many functions in Nature [1] and the layer is important in allowing the production of the famous Kopi Luwak from Indonesia [2]:

Although Kopi Luwak.. ..comes from the Indonesian islands of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, it is not its exotic location of origins but rather its unusual and quite unexpected method of production which contribute to its mystique and price. The desire to consume unique food products is a characteristic of passionate coffee drinkers.

So, what is the method of production of Kopi Luwak? The skin and pulp of ripe coffee cherries are naturally sweet and are thus attractive as foods for a number of vertebrates. Among these, the African civet feeds on coffee cherries in north-east Africa, the original home of the plant, utilising the pulp and then depositing the beans, protected largely by the mucilaginous coat, in their faeces. This passage is the basis of the production of Kopi Luwak, and begins with the collection of faeces of palm civets (below, upper) that climb trees and eat the beans in situ. They would originally have fed upon the many other forms of fruit available, but the arrival of coffee plantations provided a new, and concentrated, source of food. Coffee beans are retrieved from the palm civet faeces (below, lower) and are then washed and prepared for export. The collection of faeces from the wild has now been superseded by a battery-farming approach [3], with caged civets being fed coffee cherries, but the beans that have passed through civets are still a very tiny part of the total market for coffee beans. The same is true of coffee beans that pass through Jacu birds [4], that rival the fame of Kopi Luwak.

Ingestion of fruits results in the dispersal of seeds, but there are many other methods for this essential process that are more familiar to us:

- Coconuts falling into the sea and being carried large distances to other islands

- The winged seeds of sycamore that we used as "helicopters" when we were children

- The "clocks" of dandelions, with each seed having a parachute

- The explosive pods of gorse that fling seeds large distances

- Seeds of avens with hooks that attach to animal fur

These are just a few examples of a large number of dispersal mechanisms that have evolved and all readers will know of others. However, the passage of seeds through animal guts is less familiar to us, yet we eat many berries and pay little attention to what happens to the seeds they contain. The purple droppings that result from birds eating blackberries, elderberries and other fruits are more familiar, especially to car owners in late summer, but we are less aware that the droppings often contain seeds and that these are deposited in fertiliser, far from the parent plant.

Anna Traveset has reviewed the effect of frugivores (birds, non-flying mammals, bats, reptiles, fishes) on the germination of seeds that pass through the gut of animals and concludes [5]:

In addition to moving seeds from the parent plant to sites that can be suitable for recruitment and seedling growth, frugivore seed dispersers have the capacity to modify the germination patterns of many plants by varying the potential germinability of seeds, the rate of germination, or both.

The effect on germination is complex and depends on many factors, varying also from individual to individual. Each plant is likely to produce many seeds, so the main beneficial effect of having fleshy fruits is dispersal, just as it is for the other mechanisms listed above. All worth thinking about when eating strawberries, or when savouring a cup of Kopi Luwak, This unusual coffee is yet another example of the extraordinary power of evolution and of the ingenuity of humans in taking advantage of natural processes. Is it the best coffee though?

[1] http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/we-cant-exist-without-slime.html

[2] Massimo F. Marcone (2004) Composition and properties of Indonesian palm civet coffee (Kopi Luwak) and Ethiopian civet coffee. Food Research International 37: 901-912.

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/13/civet-coffee-cut-the-crap

[4] http://modernfarmer.com/2013/10/flight-jacu-bird/

[5] Anna Traveset (1998) Effect of seed passage through vertebrate frugivores' guts on germination: a review. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 1/2: 151-190.

Scotney Castle and an eminent Natural Historian

The Scotney Castle Estate in Kent provides a wonderful example of an English Romantic landscape. The original castle was modified extensively in the early Nineteenth Century (below, upper) and a new house, in a quite different style (below, lower), built on the hill overlooking it. The grounds are beautiful, but the old castle and its moat are the dominant features and can be seen from all the best rooms in the new house, completed on the instructions of Edward Hussey III in 1843.

When visiting large houses owned by the National Trust, I always make a point of looking at the titles of the books in their libraries. It is clear that Edward Hussey III, like many of his class in the mid-Nineteenth Century, was interested in Science and Natural History. Among the books in the new house were Jabez Hogg's The Microscope: it's History, Construction and Application (published in 1854), James F. Johnston's The Chemistry of Common Life (published in 1855) and Mrs T. J. Hussey's Illustrations of British Mycology (published in two parts in 1847 and 1855). Hogg's book was very popular at the time, selling over 50,000 copies, and it describes the physics of microscopy; the construction of microscopes; how to prepare materials for microscopy; and descriptions of animals, plants and their parts. It was a comprehensive guide for those indulging in this Victorian passion, and Johnston's work gave some answers to questions about the biology of organisms that were observed, with sections on air and odours; water; soil; foodstuffs and digestion; liquors; and narcotics (!).

However, it was Mrs Hussey's book that most attracted my attention, as she had a family connection to Scotney Castle. Anna Maria was married to Thomas John Hussey, the son of the Reverend John Hussey, who was the younger brother of Edward Hussey, the grandfather of Edward III who built the new house. Maria (the name by which she was known in the family) was the daughter of the Reverend J. T. A. Reed and the Reed family, like the Husseys, were acquainted with many leading figures of the day in science, including Babbage, Herschel, Fox Talbot and Graves. Both families knew the Darwins of Downe and Maria's younger brother George Varenne Reed was tutor to Charles Darwin's sons [1].

Maria had three younger sisters, all of whom were interested in botany and in collecting plants [2], and she wrote a wonderfully personal journal during a visit that she made to Dover with her youngest sister Kate (Catherine) in 1836 [2]. At the time, Maria was 31 years old, with two young children, and Kate 19 years old. In addition to many visits to the shore to observe marine life, the two collected plants, fossils and other geological specimens during walks in the Dover area, some of which required short trips by boat. There is no mention of her interest in fungi in the journal.

In Illustrations of British Mycology, Maria describes fungi (funguses to her) that can be collected in Britain; the means of collecting them; and how to identify them. It is detailed, accurate and scholarly, with many plates that show the skill of both Maria and her sister Fanny (Frances) as illustrators - montages of some of the lithographs in the book are shown below. We learn from Elizabeth Finn that Maria was not happy with the work of the lithographers [1] and one can only wonder at how good the originals must have been:

In addition to its value in allowing accurate identifications, the book also conveys Maria's enthusiasm for the subject. Here are two examples of her descriptions, first of toadstools and then of mushrooms [3]:

This splendid Agaric lifts its head boldly, the "observed of all observers", even the most careless so that it is oftener kicked to pieces, and other attentions of the kind bestowed on it, than most "Toadstools" receive: I have mourned over specimens nearly a foot across, their pure ivory gills and glowing scarlet pileus crushed in the dusty road.

The English "Mushroom" proper takes two different forms, according to soil and other conditions of site. The first case is that of rich cool loam districts, such as the extensive grazing pastures where the dairymen of Bucks herd their cows, and which have not been ploughed or mowed within the scope of the remotest tradition; the herbage is kept down by the cattle, and neither rude gravel below, not rank matted grass above, offers obstacles to the regular development of the fairest and most fragile of mushrooms, the very perfection of the thing! no freckles deface the white silky pileus, no thick cottony screen swathes a clumsy stem betokening coarse over-feeding; a light soft veil is all the protection the gills ever had, and they have expanded so rapidly even that has disappeared, or left only a few lacerated fragments on the stem; tender, succulent, friable and digestible, nourished on pure earth, in air redolent of wild thyme and the breath of kine, by dew which might be Fairies' nectar it is so free from the impurities of city miasma..

I do not know if Maria visited Scotney, but I would like to think that she did, as the estate must have been a splendid place for hunting fungi. The presence of her book in the Library indicates that Edward III was likely to have had an interest in this activity, and perhaps in looking at details of fungi using a microscope, and who better than a relative (by marriage) to act as a guide? Judging from her descriptions in the book and in her journal, she would have made a fascinating companion on Nature rambles and she deserves to be ranked alongside Margaret Gatty, Anna Atkins, and Amelia Griffiths, all eminent Victorian Natural Historians.

[1] Elizabeth A Finn (2009) Hussey, Anna Maria (1805-1853). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

[2] Elizabeth Finn Botany, Boats and Bathing Machines: Anna Maria Hussey's Holiday in Dover 1836. Available as an e-book from Kent Archives Service - Ref U3754.

[3] Mrs T. J. Hussey (1847) Illustrations of British Mycology, containing Figures and Descriptions of the Funguses of Interest and Novelty Indigenous to Britain. London, Reeve Brothers.

Where is Heaven?

I attended Winner Street Baptist Church in Paignton, Devon as a child. It attracted families and there were often three generations present on Sunday mornings when the service included hymns, prayers, announcements and a short sermon that was more comforting than challenging. I wasn't conscious of much questioning, or even discussion, of the topics raised.

As would be expected, Heaven and Hell were mentioned frequently and it was made clear to us that going to the former resulted from being good and to the latter from being sinful. As to locations, I imagined that Hell was somewhere deep in the Earth because of all the fire and brimstone that characterised the place: Heaven, on the other hand, must be above the Earth, but I didn't know where. I learned that, after death, the soul left on its journey to Heaven (at least one person in the Winner Street congregation told me it was possible to see this) and no-one wanted to contemplate going to Hell. As I grew older, and began to question my religious beliefs, I began to wonder where Heaven might be.

If I now ask "Where is Heaven?", I am influenced by two sources, art and literature and, especially, The Holy Bible. Paintings show Heaven to be in close proximity to the surface of the Earth and images provide us with the reassurance that the souls of those who die, especially our loved ones, are not far away from us. It also means that Heaven and Earth can be represented on one canvas:

What does The Holy Bible say about the location of Heaven? A search of the Authorised Version of the King James' Bible reveals that there are 691 mentions of "heaven" (in all its meanings) [1], so, for a literalist interpretation of Heaven, as described in Genesis, I turned to The Bible, Genesis and Geology [2]. An illustration from their website is shown below and this has the arrangement of the three Heavens, with the final one (where souls reside?) beyond the waters above the firmament and, presumably, in a specific location. Although the diagram is drawn as a series of linear strata, it is based on a geocentric view, pertaining at the time The Holy Bible was written and remaining unchanged for over a thousand years. Some literalists may still believe in it.

The mediaeval view of Heaven is expressed by Dante in The Divine Comedy [3]. Dante maintains the geocentric approach and uses ideas relevant at the time, like those of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on the hierarchy of angels, and melds them into a highly influential work. Many readers of Paradiso must have been convinced that Dante's description was based on a revelation of the true nature of Heaven. It differs from the literal Biblical account and is a good example of embellishment - an excellent summary diagram of Dante's view is given in the Oxford World's Classics edition of The Divine Comedy [3]:

In 1543, Copernicus proposed the heliocentric view of the Universe that better explained our observations and this is the view that we have today. We now know that our solar system occurs within a galaxy and that the expanding universe contains myriads of galaxies all within a void, about which we know very little indeed. It is assumed to contain dark matter and dark energy, both of which are theoretical constructs, and there are areas of modern cosmology that seem like metaphysics to those of us that don't have a sufficient level of understanding, or acceptance. What can certainly be said is that, if we take the literal interpretation of The Holy Bible, souls have a very long journey to Heaven, if it is outside the expanding Universe [4].

Given that the Christian religion centres on the fate of one's soul, the position of Heaven is important to those with an enquiring mind.  Where is it? Is there any evidence that it exists, other than through religious faith?

[1] BibleGateway website: https://www.biblegateway.com/

[2] The Bible, Genesis and Geology website: http://www.kjvbible.org/firmament.html

[3] Dante Alighieri (early 14th Century) The Divine Comedy (read in the translation by Charles H. Sisson). Oxford, Oxford University Press (reissued as a paperback in 2008).

[4] http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/