From acclaimed medical historian Howard Markel, author of
When Germs Travel, the astonishing account of the years-long
cocaine use of Sigmund Freud, young, ambitious neurologist,
and William Halsted, the equally young, pathfinding surgeon.
Markel writes of the physical and emotional damage caused by
the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately
changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One
became the father of psychoanalysis; the other, of modern
surgery.
Both men were practicing medicine at the same time in the
1880s: Freud at the Vienna General Hospital, Halsted at New
York’s Bellevue Hospital. Markel writes that Freud began to
experiment with cocaine as a way of studying its therapeutic
uses—as an antidote for the overprescribed morphine, which
had made addicts of so many, and as a treatment for depression.
Halsted, an acclaimed surgeon even then, was curious about
cocaine’s effectiveness as an anesthetic and injected the
drug into his arm to prove his theory. Neither Freud nor
Halsted, nor their colleagues, had any idea of the drug’s
potential to dominate and endanger their lives. Addiction as
a bona fide medical diagnosis didn’t even exist in the elite
medical circles they inhabited.
In An Anatomy of Addiction, Markel writes about the life and
work of each man, showing how each came to know about
cocaine; how Freud found that the drug cured his
indigestion, dulled his aches, and relieved his depression.
The author writes that Freud, after a few months of taking
the magical drug, published a treatise on it, Über Coca, in
which he described his “most gorgeous excitement.” The paper
marked a major shift in Freud’s work: he turned from
studying the anatomy of the brain to exploring the human psyche.
Halsted, one of the most revered of American surgeons,
became the head of surgery at the newly built Johns Hopkins
Hospital and then professor of surgery, the hospital’s most
exalted position, committing himself repeatedly to Butler
Hospital, an insane asylum, to withdraw from his out-of
control cocaine use.
Halsted invented modern surgery as we know it today:
devising new ways to safely invade the body in search of
cures and pioneering modern surgical techniques that
controlled bleeding and promoted healing. He insisted on
thorough hand washing, on scrub-downs and whites for doctors
and nurses, on sterility in the operating room—even
inventing the surgical glove, which he designed and had the
Goodyear Rubber Company make for him—accomplishing all of
this as he struggled to conquer his unyielding desire for
cocaine.
An Anatomy of Addiction tells the tragic and heroic story of
each man, accidentally struck down in his prime by an
insidious malady: tragic because of the time, relationships,
and health cocaine forced each to squander; heroic in the
intense battle each man waged to overcome his affliction as
he conquered his own world with his visionary healing gifts.
Here is the full story, long overlooked, told in its rich
historical context.
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