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Thomas De Quincey

Thomas Penson De Quincey was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West.
leveår: 15 august 1785 8 december 1859

Citater

Алиса Калита Алиса Калитаhar citeretfor 2 år siden
However, as the historian Richard Newman stated in his excellent article ‘Opium Smoking in Late Imperial China’: ‘Opium smoking undoubtedly produced some addicts, and some of those addicts were reduced to a pitiable condition, but it is not their image that should be foremost in the mind; we should also remember the peasants carrying their lumps of poppy juice to market, the boatmen wrapped in their blankets passing around an opium pipe in the twilight, and the Chinese gentleman smoking peaceably at home with his friends. It is not the existence of addiction that requires explanation so much as the fact that, in a society in which opium was cheap and widely available, so many people smoked lightly or not at all. The production and consumption of opium were, for most people, normal rather than deviant activities, and it is the implications of this normality which ought to be explored, both for the sake of China’s history and for the sake of their relevance to modern societies learning to live with drugs.’
Алиса Калита Алиса Калитаhar citeretfor 2 år siden
Whatever De Quincey did, from people-watching to conversation, was improved by opium, but the most remarkable effect of the drug was to enable him to study with phenomenal success the German metaphysics of Immanuel Kant and Joseph Schelling.
Алиса Калита Алиса Калитаhar citeretfor 2 år siden
I was informed by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol
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