Drugs during the 1700's?

[JS1990]

Hi there everyone,

I hope you are well and having a wonderful week so far.

I am interested to know what kind of information we've got on drug usage among pirates of the 1700's - does anyone have any insights? In taverns, on board etc.

Warm regards

J

[Mission]

Not much is known about this. The view of recreational drug use was markedly different at this time. (By which I mean I've never seen anything ever mentioned about nonalcoholic drug abuse in all my period reading. Since medicine is my primary topic of research, I do specifically look for such things.)

We have also talked about this before. See the original post Recreational Drugs... 1600's - 1700's

for more information. Foxe and William Red Wake cite some interesting sources there.

[Brit.Privateer]

This question kind of occurred over at "Ask Historians" on Reddit. Lesson: people like to talk about drugs a lot: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1y0m6y/did_caribbean_pirates_smoke_cannabis/

[Mission]

Marijuana appears in some of herbals (books explaining herbs - I believe John Gerard talks about it) and in some of the dispensatories (privately printed books on drugs from the period - Nicholas Culpeper discusses it).

However, neither the surgical books nor the sailor's accounts I've read mention it at all, so I have the impression it was either not widely used or so unremarkable to a period audience that it wasn't viewed as being of interest. (Although it's sort of hard to deduce much about something when the only evidence you have of its use is no evidence other than a mention in a books containing hundreds of plant-based medicinals.)

If a drug were to be abused at this time, I would suspect it would be opium and the various opiate medicines that were derived from it. However, once again, I find nothing referring to such abuse. This isn't to say it didn't happen, just that there is no period evidence for it.

As Brit.Privateer says, I think people today are far more fascinated with the idea of recreational drug use than they were then.

[JS1990]

That is so interesting. Thank you all so much for your fantastic assistance.

Mission - I tend to agree regarding the Opium side of things. Otherwise, I suppose that alcohol was the drug of choice for the majority!

I will also conduct more research and see what I can find - Will report back soon :-)

Warm regards to you all

J