The Use and Abuse of Drugs in
Nineteenth-Century Tennessee History Probably the earliest source of information on narcotics in
Tennessee history was Dr. John C. Gunn・s book Domestic Medicine, or
Poor Man・s Friend. In the hours of Affliction, Pain and Sickness
(1830). Gunn・s book provided counsel about many topics, including opium,
the use and abuse of which was neither ordinary nor extraordinary. Dr. Gunn endorsed the professional use of opium. "Without
this valuable and essential medicine" he wrote, "it would be
next to impossible for a Physician to practice his profession with any
considerable degree of success. It may...be called the...soothing angel of moral
and physical pain." Opium played a big part in remedies for a
variety of ailments including but not limited to: fear, grief, ague and fever,
rheumatism, sleeplessness, consumption, "constant looseness of the
bowels," catarrh, kidney stones, ear-aches, lock jaw, cancer, and diseases
of pregnancy. Opium wrote the Tennessee physician, had from colonial times
been used in America as the main ingredient in Bateman・s Drops and
Godfrey・s Cordial. These had "sustained their characters for
near a century [and] have opium as their base or principal parts, and they are
certainly valuable medicines." Thus the use of opium was "the
result...of a continuous growth...." So, medicinal use of opium was
unexceptional in America. Opium legitimated the physician・s practice. Besides being a medicinal option Gunn sanctioned opium for its
pleasurable and consciousness-altering effects. His very bad poetry reflects
this assertion: Charmed with this potent drug, the exalted
mind All sense of woe delivers to the wind; It clears the cloudy font of wrinkled care And soothes the bosom of despair! Opium was better than alcohol he wrote. The excitement produced
by alcohol "is a flame which soon subsides, and leaves nothing"
intoned Gunn, "but ashes of self reprehension and bitter reflection behind
it...." Opium, however, gave a "steady, agreeable, and
permanent glow of pleasure, [both] physical and intellectual
which," he stated discerningly,
"lasts from ten to twelve hours." Alcohol,
wrote the Tennessee physician, confused the mind, but opium induced
"order, harmony and pleasurable serenity, [it] produces a just
equipoise between our intellectual strength and sensibilities [while it] arouses
all our dormant faculties, and disposes them to harmonious and pleasurable
activity." Gunn・s enthusiastic rapture was tempered with an
afterthought: "Opium, if habitually taken, in other words when it is made
use of as a stimulant...and not as a medicine, affects the physical
system....[and] the mind becomes weak, irresolute, heavy, dull and languid"
followed by addiction and death. So he admonished: "...use not this drug,
but as intended by the great Father of the Universe...as a medicine alone, it
is...invaluable...in the relief of pain and suffering, and soothing and
tranquilizing to the system with balmy refreshing slumbers." Thus the
doctor gave conflicting advice. It is impossible to know the extent of opium
addiction in antebellum Tennessee, yet it seems likely that some could have been
given the probability that painful diseases were not unknown and that physicians
applied it so freely. Many believe that America・s drug problem originated in
the Civil War. Morphine was freely given to casualties on both sides and
liberally administered in cases of amputation or advance gangrene. The Union
army procured over nine million opium pills and over 2,840,000 ounces of opium
products including 29,828 ounces of morphine sulfate. Dr. T. L. Madden,
professor of surgery in the Shelby Medical College in Nashville, prescribed a
concoction of quinine, calomel, cayenne pepper and opium for "congestive
fevers" so common in the Tennessee River Valley. In 1863 the Medical
Inspector of the Federal Army advised that the concoction be utilized by the
Medical Corps in Tennessee. Records relating to the use of opium by the Confederacy are
nonexistent, but that does not mean opiates were unknown. In 1863, recognizing
that the substance was scarce, Confederate Army Surgeon-General Samuel Preston
Moore issued a circular that unsuccessfully attempted to interest Southern women
in the production of opium: Medical purveyors will make endeavors...to induce the
ladies throughout the South to interest themselves in the culture of the garden
poppy. They may thus render the Confederacy essential service. Purveyors will
furnish the ladies with the seeds...and will instruct them that the juice
exuding from the punctured capsules, when sufficiently hardened, should be
carefully put up and forwarded to the nearest purveying
depot. Despite the Union blockade, however, opiates were widely
attainable in the Army of Tennessee. An excellent example is an entry in
Sergeant John Coffee Williamson・s journal. He served with the 5th
Tennessee Cavalry during Wheeler・s summer 1864 raid into the Volunteer
State. On August 29 after a triumphant dash into Sparta, the cavalry encamped
near Smithville. The sergeant nonchalantly wrote in his diary: I have been very sick all day, and at night I was
perfectly worn out. We got up no rations. I took a dose of morphine and
slept soundly. Physicians in blue and gray prescribed opium for diarrhea and
dysentery, arguably the two greatest causes of death in the war. One Confederate
surgeon revealed just how freely opium was dispensed for intestinal ailments.
While on the march he carried in one pocket a ball of a laxative called blue
mass, and in the other a ball of opium. Each morning at sick call he would first
ask each soldier: "How are your bowels? If they were open, I administered a
plug of opium, if they were shut I gave a plug of blue mass." Given the
commonplace occurrence of malaria, dysentery, and the "Tennessee
Trots" and the cavalier issuance of opium, one can understand the ease with
which troops on both sides of the conflict contracted the "soldier・s
disease." To the question "how are your bowels" the answer must
quickly have become "loose." Yet the Civil War did not cause drug
addiction in Tennessee or in the United States, but only quickened its
cadence. Rare surveys by public health officials conducted in Michigan
in 1878, Chicago in 1880, and Iowa in 1885, demonstrated that nearly seventy
five percent of all drug addicts were women who took on the habit as a
result of their desire to ease neuralgia, aching cramps, and even morning
sickness. A rapid rise in opium and morphine consumption began in the early
1870s. Apart from prescriptions another cause for abuse was the widespread use
of opiates in patent medicines. Regardless of gender, most addicts concealed
their dependence on opiates and their number cannot be quantified. Conventional
wisdom, then, holds that opium addiction increased largely as a factor its
therapeutic utilization, and there is little to contradict that notion.
Nevertheless, some drug abuse resulted from other, less medicinal usage. In the late nineteenth century the practice of smoking opium
was closely identified with the Chinese. Indeed, the wave of Chinese immigration
to America brought with it the custom of smoking opium which they called
"chasing the tiger." Indeed, Chinese immigrants figured prominently in
some of the earliest accounts of this until novel recreational use of the
drug. One report in the Memphis Daily Appeal in May 1879,
complained that: "At the Chinese opium dens of this city, it is not unusual
to see a fast man and lewd woman resting on a dirty couch and smoking together
from a dirty pipe, fixed up by a dirtier Chinaman [sic]." A widely
reported incident in Memphis in late June 1879 explained that opium smoking was
rampantly on the increase in the city. Accounts explained how five people, three
women escorted by two "sports" were discovered smoking opium in the
back room of Henry Ying・s laundry on 207 Main street. One article entitled
"CRACKING A JOINT," [sic] told how two Memphis
police officers entered the opium den at Ying・s establishment after
midnight. There a "strange sight met their eyes." According to the
account: Several parties were seated in the room, including
several of the demimonde and three sports, who were watching with great
interest a bed in the farther end of the apartment. Upon this bed way lying a
Chinaman and a white nymph du pave [sic].... The girl held between
her lips an uncouth-looking pipe...upon which was sizzling a gummy substance,
which was applied from the end of an iron wire, which...[the Chinaman] heated in
a small lamp placed in a waiter on the bed, and then dipped in a small wooden
box which contained the substance referred to. From the top of the pipe a thin
blue flame ascended, and large puffs of smoke came from the lips of the girl as
she lay in the dreamy happiness produced by the drug....like that of the
hashheesh [sic] eater of the East. The startled "sports" managed to breakout, but the
three women and Mr. Ying were taken to police headquarters. Ying・s
paraphernalia were confiscated. According to the reporter, whose knowledgeable
account of the opium den seems to misrepresent any innocence, each application
of opium consisted of three drops, which in the opium-smokers' patois was called
a "joint." The process of smoking opium was called
"cracking a joint." Fifty cents bought
three joints. It was known that there were several opium dens in
the city in 1879, "all situated in Chinese laundries." Perhaps more
disturbingly impressive was the assertion that "the practice of smoking
opium is largely on the increase [in Memphis], not only amongst .the
gang・ but also among a class of people considered respectable."
Consequently the recreational abuse of opium, in Memphis at least, was not
circumscribed to society・s riffraff, but cut across class, racial, and
gender boundaries. Included were any number of respectable citizens such as
clerks, housewives, attorneys, cotton brokers, police officers, engineers,
newspaper editors, and judges. merchants, writers, bankers and the idle rich.
The "Ying incident" stimulated a debate. The editor
of the Memphis Daily Appeal was outraged at the number of "Chinese
opium dens at present in this city." "In fact" claimed the
editor, "every Chinese laundry house is an opium den. Within the past six
months opium smoking has increased to a wonderful extent in this city,
especially among women of the town and their male friends." A different
view was expressed by the editor of the Public Ledger. He wrote that Mr.
Ying "during his leisure moments indulges in the pleasurable Chinese custom
of whiffing the fumes of opium. He also favors any curious friends with a dose,
provided their curiosity leads to his hospitable den." Neither Ying nor the
three prostitutes however were prosecuted because there was no law against opium
smoking. The dismissal of the four prompted the editor of the Public
Ledger to observe: Why people haven・t a right to smoke opium, eat
hashish, or chew hen manure if they desire, is a question in many circles at
present. Tobacco chewers, cigar smokers -- especially in the street car - and
bibulous people have no more right to satisfy their appetites than opium
smokers. On June 28, 1879, the Memphis legislators amended the
city・s public health law stipulating that no one could "give away, or
have or loan for use, with or without hire or reward, any opium or any
deleterious drug, to be smoked, inhaled, or otherwise used, not any pipe,
instrument or receptacle which such thing may be done" This represents the first attempt at controlling drug abuse in
any Tennessee city. While the editor of the Daily Appeal was placated, a
letter in the Public represented a more jaded yet decidedly annoyed
constituency, and pointed out a certain hypocritical attitude expressed in this
law: Is it not strange that they will allow druggists or
anyone else that may desire to do so to sell morphine, opium, or any other
deadly poison to anyone that may have the money to pay for it? And because the
Chinese and perhaps a few others, that may wish to have an easy time for awhile
by smoking their opium...our city dads kick at it with both feet and say you
shall not smoke your opium. We allow you, however, to take it internally or by
the skin, and if it kills you, all right, we are not to blame. The Abuse of opium did not cease in Memphis. Six years after
the "Ying incident," in late August 1885, a Bluff City newspaper
reporter visited a local Chinese/laundry/opium den. He revealed that the use of
morphine and opium were greatly on the increase in the Volunteer State and the
nation as a whole. Just as been reported in the previous decade:
"Votaries are to be found in .good society・ as well as
among the .shady kind.・ In opium dens the so-called respectable
ladies and actresses of note can be seen mingling with outcasts of their own
sex, and with all classes of men in silent fellowship." It was estimated that in Memphis the population of opium
addicts was upwards of 1,000, mostly white males and females. As a Memphis
druggist explained, "they suffer some intense pain of some sort, and a
physician will prescribe morphine and administer it hypodermically. They find
immediate relief and bless the drug. The next time they feel the pain
they don・t wait for the physician, but take it on other own...and...become
confirmed opium fiends." Some smoked gum opium, some drank,
inhaled, or injected morphine, but most women became addicted as a result of the
therapeutic use of paregoric or laudanum. It was not until 1909 that smoking
opium was made illegal in the United States. The problem was common in Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga.
Smoking opium was a specialized product that was meant only for recreational
use. An alarming headline in the March 30, 1888, Nashville Daily American
read in bold letters "THE HASHEESH EATERS." A
druggist explained how the opium habit was increasing in the Capital. The
greater numbers of addicts were middle-class white women who veiled their
addiction by seeking out opium and morphine from drugstores in the suburbs.
Nashville・s centenarian Miss Jane Thomas related that at about the time
"they had just begun inhaling morphine here," she was at a fashionable
party. One of the guests complained of a headache. She was given some powdered
morphine which apparently cured her headache and caused her to swoon.?No
doubt. One sad story in the Capital in 1895, related the overdose
death of a young woman made an addict by morphine her physician father
prescribed for her great pain after a runaway buggy accident. She escaped from
the drug sanitarium, quickly trekked to Nashville and bought the narcotics that
killed her that same afternoon. She died a casualty of "the deadly blight
of the awful morphine habit." Some drug fatalities were by accident or
suicide. For example the early June 1874 death of Ms. Willie Melrose in Memphis.
A newspaper story entitled "The Old, Old Story," told how a courtesan
died of an overdose of "deadly morphine, administered by her own
hand." In August of the same year, George Wade, thirty-two, died suddenly
in Murfreesboro. He "had for some time been on a spree, and had become
nervously prostrated." He then took some morphine to settle his nerves. He
was found dead the next morning, his nerves obviously settled. In Memphis, in
June 1885, "Morris Rosette...a young man of the Hebrew persuasion came to
the conclusion that life is not worth living and purchasing a quantity [of
morphine and] took a large dose with suicidal intent." Rosette was soon
discovered and a physician applied an emetic. The young Jew was taken home where
he recovered. Other examples abound. Opiates were not the only drugs subject to abuse. During the
Creek Indian War (1813-1814) soldiers imbibed the "black drink" before
abandoning Andrew Jackson in the Mississippi Territory. This Native American
concoction stimulated the central nervous system with a cornucopian dose of
caffeine, and was used to strengthen one・s resolve to march and keep awake
while on guard duty. There was even an account of a domestic altercation brought
about by the use of "Dean・s strychnine" in Memphis in 1861.
Another central nervous system stimulant, cocaine, is better known. About 1885
cocaine became widely and wildly popular. Large drug houses provided cocaine at
high prices that plummeted as early as 1886 when production caught up with an
incredible demand. In 1903 Memphis Police Captain Perry recalled the presence of
cocaine among the city・s poor and criminal elements as early as the
1880s. Although not unique in Tennessee・s urban centers, cocaine
became a problem near the turn of the century. Cocaine was popularly associated
with African-Americans but was by no means race specific. According to the white
press, Tennessee Negroes became addicts because, as they said: "I
couldn・t git nothin・ else boss." In Knoxville where the police
made efforts to stop the liquor traffic the use of cocaine increased. In Memphis
"no attempt was made to prevent the sale of liquor, [yet] the [cocaine]
drug habit increased...." Anecdotal reports suggested that black men used
more cocaine than white men and committed more crimes as a consequence. In some
cases contractors utilizing Negro labor actually facilitated cocaine addiction
among their workers "under the impression that they can get more and better
work from their employees." Cocaine was also utilized in the white slavery
traffic, corrupting "young girls, and....when the habit of using the drug
has been established it is but a short time before the latter fall to the ranks
of prostitution." Cocaine was thought to be the cure for morphine, heroin,
alcohol and opium addictions. The drug・s exhilarating properties made it a
preferred component not only of patent medicines, but also for wine, beer and
even soda pop. An advertisement in the Daily Memphis Avalanche in
December 1885, extolled the virtues of J.S. Pemberton・s tonic,
"French Wine of Coca." Laced heavily with cocaine, it was the
"ideal Nerve Tonic and .Intellectual Beverage・" and rid
the buyer of those "・tired and good for nothing
feelings.・" Sears and Roebuck offered
"Peruvian Wine of Coca." According to the 1897
catalog: "If you wish to accomplish double the amount of work or
have to undergo an unusual amount of hardship, always keep a bottle of our
Peruvian Wine of Coca near you. Its sustaining
powers are remarkable." Sears, no doubt anticipating a huge
demand, "made arrangements for an extra large shipment." A dozen
bottles cost $10.00. The summer of 1900 was a time of widespread public fear of
cocaine, and attempts were made to control the traffic in Chattanooga, Memphis
and Knoxville. Chattanooga was alarmed by the spread of the cocaine drug habit
and the local clergy demanded a restrictive law. The city should act itself to
end the menace. On June 6 the Chattanooga city council passed Tennessee・s
first anti-cocaine, morphine, and laudanum ordinance. The law made it a
misdemeanor for anyone to sell or give cocaine to anyone without a prescription.
Only disreputable drugstores as found "Cocaine Alley" would lose
business. Police Chief Hill stated his wholehearted sanction and vowed
vigorously to enforce the law. A few days later, a newspaper headline read "Fiends in
Cocaine Alley Experiencing Trouble in Securing Their Favorite Stimulant."
The ordinance had cut off addicts thus "giving them a chance to recover and
reform." But addicts were not so convinced and sidestepped the requirement
for a prescription to obtain the drug. Many drug stores, it so happened, had
their own "doctors" who wrote prescriptions for eager addicts.
Situated in both poor white and Negro sections of the city, mercenary medical
doctors were ensconced in a small office in the rear of the drugstores where
they wrote prescriptions for any drug in demand. Some of these prescriptions
were for a pound of cocaine that the addict could draw against until the limit
had been exhausted. The police chief vowed to crack down on these kinds of
operations. In Memphis "Cocaine Joe," and "Sallie the
Sniff" were to find life more difficult if the city council was to pass an
anti-drug ordinance based on Chattanooga・s. The sale and use off cocaine
had reached such heights that the police department was unable to cope with the
problem. According to the police, there was a time when only a handful of people
were addicted to cocaine. "[N]ow 80 per cent of the colored
population...are using it in quantities that support about a dozen small drug
stores and...contribute to the volume of business of a few corner
groceries." Not only blacks "but whites are also using it in large
quantities." Cocaine caused an increase in crime. Statistics showed that
the percentages of criminals using cocaine was nearly treble that of criminals
not addicted. There were even nineteenth-century equivalents to twentieth
century "crack houses." The city Sanitary Officer inspected an
abandoned house and collected a bushel-basket・s worth of empty cocaine
boxes, all sold by one retail drug store. The problem was serious. The new ordinance made the sale of less than one
pound of cocaine without a doctor・s prescription a
misdemeanor. The retailer・s certificate would be filed and open
to the inspection of the police at any time. In 1900 a pound of cocaine sold for
about $35.00 in Memphis, well beyond the typical addict・s means. The
penalty for sale was not less than five and not more than twenty dollars. The
ordinance was unanimously passed on June 7, 1900. Knoxville had a similar cocaine problem. A Journal and
Tribune headline claimed, "Only the Poorer Classes of
the City Are Addicted."?(Richer classes, apparently, were
only recreational users.) As late as 1899, the use of cocaine was virtually
unknown but in just one year it was available in every drug store, selling at
three grains for a dime. In 1900 an average of fifty dollar・s worth was
sold by each drug store. According to the newspaper report, the "first
genuine cocaine .sniffers・ that made their appearance in Knoxville
were half a dozen negro women from Middlesboro [Kentucky]." These women,
arriving in August 1899, were believed to have introduced cocaine use on Central
Avenue, the city・s red light district. From there its use spread to both
races, genders and across class lines. Many bar patrons salted their beers with
cocaine, but this was not as economical as hypodermic injection. Only the rich
could afford syringes so the poor resorted to sniffing the drug. In 1900, the
Journal and Tribune carried a story entitled "A Night On The
Bowery." In the Bowery were there were also two or three small drug stores
whose "principal business at night seems to be the sale of morphine and
cocaine, the twin friends of the district which are sending many of its
inhabitants, especially women and girls, to their graves." At these
drug stores "all night long, pale-faced women, or girls, or boys
scarcely out of their teens, with blood-shot eyes and bloated features
showing long dissipation, come slipping in and go out with the tell-tale little
round box of powdered cocaine, or morphine." The Knoxville city
council enacted that city・s anti-drug law on July 20, 1900. By 1904-05 the
practice evidently had not been eradicated and by 1915 the use of cocaine was
still widespread. From the antebellum era to the end of the 19th century drug use and abuse in
Tennessee followed an ever-accelerating pattern. The problem would stimulate
revision of municipal ordinances in the early 1900s, culminating with a
relatively humane state narcotics-control act in 1913. Thereafter the federal
Harrison Act (1914) took precedence as the model anti-drug enforcement option.
Nevertheless, the problem of drug abuse has persisted up into the late twentieth
century when uniformly unsuccessful wars on drugs have consistently failed to
resolve the dilemma. The only attempt at legalization attempted by Tennessee was
swept aside by the national law which demonized unfortunate addicts, punishing
them for acquiring an addiction for which they should more reasonably have been
treated.?And so it remains today. If you have any further information concerning the drugs in Tennessee history, please respond. Return to the Tennessee History Resource Page