Real gone cats

So prevalent were opium dens in San Franciso’s Chinatown in the late 19th/early 20th century that they featured in a series of postcards produced at the time. The card reproduced here even includes the precise address of the den as well as the allegation that the man’s cat has become addicted to the opium fumes.

Opium was still legal at the time – albeit subject to heavy import taxes – and tours of the city’s opium dens were a must, attracting writers like Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. According to the latter, “the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would well nigh turn the stomach of a statue.”

Throughout history, other writers have been kinder to the drug. To Thomas De Quincey, author of the classic Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, opium was “just, subtle and all-conquering” while to French novelist Claude Farrere it was “magic opium that intoxicates me with pleasures and illusions, intrepid opium that here sustains me.”

On the other hand, to Willard B. Farwell, author of The Chinese At Home And Abroad, an opium den evoked “a sense of horror you have never before experienced, revolting to the last degree, sickening and stupefying.”

From romantic worship to zero tolerance, it seems that drugs have always elicited extreme responses. And perhaps none more so than opium, with all its connotations of mystery, languor and sinister beauty.

To find out more, check out a new book Opium by Barbara Hodgson, a lushly illustrated history of the drug, in which the picture accompanying this article is just one of many impressive and evocative archive images.