The Cocaine Craze in Victorian Britain

The Cocaine Craze in Victorian Britain

Many things may come to mind when you hear the word 'cocaine' - and we'd wager that the last thing on that list would be the Victorians. But as it turns out, the Victorians were avid cocaine users, whether it be to remedy ailments and injuries, give them an edge in competitive sports or simply put a bit of pep in their step. A hundred years later, it is amongst the most criminalised substances on earth.


Dr Douglas Small is a historian of medicine and author of Cocaine, Literature, and Culture, 1876-1930. He joins us today to take us through the deeper history of cocaine and explain how it went from a central feature of Incan cultural life to the defining party drug of the modern day.


Produced by James Hickmann, and edited by Dougal Patmore and Max Carrey.


Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.


We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.


You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Avsnitt(1485)

Moscow's Communist Dorm

Moscow's Communist Dorm

In 1931, an enormous apartment building was completed in Moscow. Challenging the Kremlin for architectural supremacy on the Moskva River, it was the largest residential building in Europe, combining 5...

29 Apr 202022min

Globalisation in 1000 AD

Globalisation in 1000 AD

Globalisation. It's a word we often associate with the politics, society and economics of our own lifetimes. But Valerie Hansen, an esteemed professor of History at Yale, has argued that globalisation...

27 Apr 202021min

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale

For soldiers of the Crimean War, perhaps the greatest adversary they faced was the Selimiye Barracks in Scutari, a makeshift hospital for wounded men. A lack of hygiene, medicine and compassion made t...

26 Apr 202017min

Australia, Anzac and History

Australia, Anzac and History

I was thrilled to have Mat McLachlan on the pod, one of Australia's foremost history presenters and writers. Using his encyclopaedic knowledge of Australian battlefields, Mat and I chatted about Austr...

25 Apr 202027min

The Death of Hitler

The Death of Hitler

Did Hitler shoot himself in the Führerbunker, or did he slip past the Soviets and escape to South America? There have been innumerable documentaries, newspaper articles and twitter threads written by ...

24 Apr 202020min

The Black Death

The Black Death

In this podcast, Dan Snow is joined by Professor Mark Bailey, High Master of St Paul's School, London and Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia to delve into the topic o...

22 Apr 202026min

A Curious History of Sex

A Curious History of Sex

Sex. There's a lot of it about. We talk about war, chaos and atrocities on this podcast a lot although, thankfully, few of us have first hand experience of them. Yet we rarely talk sex. Which is odd. ...

21 Apr 202018min

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

I was thrilled to be joined by Mark Vincent, an expert in criminal subculture and prisoner society in Stalinist Labour camps. Mark has looked at thousands of journals, song collections, tattoo drawing...

19 Apr 202020min

Populärt inom Historia

motiv
massmordarpodden
historiska-brott
p3-historia
historiepodden-se
olosta-mord
rss-massmordarpodden
historianu-med-urban-lindstedt
rss-seriemordarpodden
rss-brottsligt
konspirationsteorier
krigshistoriepodden
podme-bio-4
nu-blir-det-historia
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
militarhistoriepodden
rss-arkiv-stieg
vetenskapsradion-historia
rss-borgvattnets-hemligheter
oppet-fall