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.
Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author, is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He also holds professorial appointments in Psychiatry, Public Health, History, English Literature and Language, and Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases. He was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 23, 1960 and grew up in Oak Park and Southfield, Michigan. Educated at the University of Michigan (A.B., 1982, summa cum laude; M.D., 1986, cum laude) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Hospital (Intern, Resident and Fellow in General Pediatrics, 1986-1993 and Ph.D, in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology, 1994), he joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1993.
A critically acclaimed social and cultural historian of medicine, Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books including the award winning Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; paperback, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 2004; paperback Vintage/Random House, 2005). His most recent book, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf) was published in July, 2011 and was a New York Times Best Seller, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller, an ABA IndieBound Best Seller, and a New York Times Book Review "Editor's Choice".
From 2005 to 2006, Professor Markel served as a historical consultant on pandemic influenza preparedness planning for the United States Department of Defense. From 2006 to the present, he serves as the principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From late April 2009 to February 2011, served as a member of the CDC Director's "Novel A/H1N1 Influenza Team B", a real-time think tank of experts charged with evaluating the federal government's influenza policies on a daily basis during the outbreak.
In collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he is Editor-in Chief of The 1918-1919 American Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and Archive, now in composition and production at the Center for the History of Medicine and the University of Michigan Scholarly Publications Office. Funded by grants and contracts from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC, the digital encyclopedia is due to go live in Fall of 2012. Working with the CDC and a team of historians at the Center for the History of Medicine, Professor Markel currently directs a research team of medical historians at work on documenting the social history of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza pandemic.
Dr. Markel is a contributing writer and columnist for The Journal of the American Medical Association. From 2010 to 2012, he appeared monthly on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation/Science Friday; his segment, "Science Diction," discussed the history, evolution and meaning of scientific words.
In addition, Dr. Markel has contributed over 200 articles to scholarly publications and popular periodicals, from The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, and The Lancet to The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Baltimore Evening Sun, The New Republic, International Herald Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. He has appeared on numerous national radio and television news broadcasts and film documentaries about the history of medicine and public health for NPR (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, Here and Now, Tell Me More, and Market Place), ABC's Good Morning America and World News Tonight, PBS (Nova, Frontline, NewsHour), BBC The World, CNN, MSNBC, and the History Channel.
Professor Markel's work has been recognized with numerous grants, honors and awards. In 1996, he received the James A. Shannon Director's Award of the National Institutes of Health and the Burroughs-Wellcome Trust 40th Anniversary History of Medicine Award. In 1998, he was named a Centennial Historian of the City of New York and was an inaugural fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library from 1999-2000; in 2003 he received the Arthur Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. In 2007, he received the Theodore Woodward Award from the American Clinical and Climatological Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Health Investigator's Health Policy Award. In 2008, in recognition of his scholarly accomplishments, Dr. Markel was elected as a Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
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