A collection of essays exploring the complex history of drugs and narcotics throughout historyfrom ancient Greece to the present dayshows that such substances were sought originally as healing agents, both within and without the medical profession. However, the mood- and mind-altering characteristics of some have led to the widespread abuse and legal controls we see today.

Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine John Scarborough; 2. Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco coffee cocoa tea and distilled liquor sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Rudi Matthee; 3. Pharmacological experimentation with opium in the eighteenth century Andreas-Holger Maehle; 4. The regulation of the supply of drugs in Britain before 1868 S. W. F. Holloway; 5. Das Kaiserliche Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Office) and the chemical industry in Germany during the Second Empire: partners or adversaries? Erika Hickel; 6. From all-purpose anodyne to marker of deviance: physicians' attitudes towards opiates in the United States of America from 1890 to 1940 Caroline Jean Acker; 7 Changes in alcohol use among Navajos and other Indians of the American Southwest Stephen J. Kunitz and Jerrold E. Levy; 8. The drug habit: the association of the word 'drug' with abuse in American history John Parascandola; 9. Research and development in the UK pharmaceutical industry from the nineteenth century to the 1960s Judy Slinn; 10. AIDS drugs and history Virginia Berridge; 11. Anomalies and mysteries: the 'War on Drugs' Ann Dally.