ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains about the phenomenon of addiction has a long socio-cultural history but the field of knowledge that has developed around it is very recent. Addiction was initially understood from a non-empirical, non-scientific viewpoint and even later, after the mid-nineteenth-century epistemological shift towards medicalisation of the condition; the concept was not based exclusively on pathological and physiological interpretation. It is divided into two parts: the first, The Cultural History of Addiction in Nineteenth-Century Britain, explores the felt experiences of addicts and those around them, and the ways in which addiction was interpreted and presented; the second, The Medical History of Addiction in Nineteenth-Century Britain, traces the development of medical theory and practice. The Romans acquired knowledge of opium from the Greeks, and the surviving texts of Galen, the second-century physician and advocate of the drug, influenced European medical knowledge for many centuries.
