"Zabaldevshee" society
"If you look at different countries and different periods of history, it is very difficult to not find there any intoxicating substances, - says the exhibition's curator, Mike Jay, who is also the author of the accompanying book. - Those that affect the mind and mood of the substance - of human culture. But we do not think of them as drugs, at least those that we use in our country - tea, coffee and alcohol.
"It's very helpful communication - collectively, the" poisoned ", so to speak - continues Jay. - So, in Samoa, for example, is made to a family get together or even members of different tribes, and drank kava. It's like a tube of peace among the Indians - If you divide this up with someone, then you're with him now one. "
The benefits of such dope potions tells an ancient monastic manuscript 11 centuries from England, and a jug for storing opium age of three and a half thousand years, made in Cyprus, but also found in Israel, shows how British archaeologists confirm, that he used for any other purpose.
And there are things and a little older, like Babylonian cuneiform tablet VI century BC, which describes the plant "gunnabu (scientists believe - cannabis), which was used as a medical means of gynecological disorders. Next to it - Assyrian cuneiform, which mentions the plant "azaleas, helps to forget anxiety, as well as treating paralysis and weakness.
But perhaps more surprising than the ancient cuneiform is relatively recent - the beginning of the twentieth century - the bottles with child heroin cough syrup elixir with diamorphine and other rashozhie drugs sold freely in pharmacies before the British in 1920, the Law on Dangerous Drugs.
banal currency
In the nineteenth century opium trade has become one of the key factors contributing to the power of the British Empire.
According to Mike Jay, in Britain at that time, opium was allowed, at any pharmacy could buy a tincture, but in China the emperor forbade its use: "However, China had a different drug to which addicted British - tea, and in those years, tea comes only from China. The British bought it in huge quantities, it cost too much and had somehow all of this fund. And then the British traders began to import opium smuggling in China, which is commercially grown in India, in Calcutta, and this process we see here on the lithographs, "- says the curator.
This illicit trade actively supported the British policy, stating that the Chinese ban on opium - an illegal barrier to free trade.
Immediately, the subject made, not without mockery installing Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping: on one side is a huge, painted with silver paint the figure of Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Minister, is actively encouraging the smuggling of opium into China, and next to it, long for crawling, Opium tube.
Nearby, a section of pharmacies - in the lab, all the walls are hung with lithographs, watercolors and drawings depicting opium dens and eared poppies here magazine All Year from 1870, which was printed in Dickens novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" general reader acquainted with the existing in London's East End at the time opium den, where zahazhival one of the heroes of the novel.
bite from this side - will become more ..."
Literary evidence of drug experiences, express or encrypted, a lot. Here, of course, the famous "Confessions of an English-opiomana" Thomas De Quincey, in which he describes in detail the pleasures and pains caused by this substance, which he became addicted to the age of 19, trying to calm facial neuralgia and handwritten fragment of the poem "Kubla Khan "by Samuel Coleridge, and life consuming opium tincture. In the preface to the poem by Coleridge says that he wrote her, recovering from opium stupor.
Historians believe that the idea of hallucinogenic mushrooms from which bites Alice, to increase or decrease, could come to Lewis Carroll, after reading a popular book in those years, English botanist and mycologist Mordecai Cooke "The Seven Sisters of the carotid, which describes the seven known narcotic substances and their impact on perception and describes how the Siberian shamans who eat fly agarics, is changing the perception: the big things they seem small, small - large.
Incidentally, in the very first story of Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four" (this book is present here too), the famous detective indulges in his spare time, not only cocaine but also morphine, arguing that the only way he could reach the intellectual heights.
But by the end of the XIX century, when public opinion is antagonized cocaine Conan Doyle under the strict guidance of Dr. Watson has weakened the dependence of his hero from the stimulants.
under the influence
The rapid development of medicine in the XIX century gave mankind many new drugs discovered by doctors and scientists during the experiments.
Often, as is the case with Sir Humphrey Davy, who carried out the study c laughing gas, scientific observations were combined with personal pleasure and pastime.
If the impact of medical means can be tested on animals and observe their behavior, impressions of drugs affecting the mind, you can hear only from people who've tried them on myself. It is similar to experiments with drugs, which many prominent personalities, who had not always related to medicine, conducted on himself, is dedicated to Hall of Self-Experimentation.
Here the picture made a student under the influence of hashish outstanding French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, the inventor of the famous shower.
Next door brochure Uber Coca, in which another famous psychiatrist - Sigmund Freud, not to recognize potential dangers of cocaine, addictive, writes: "It is no need to continue taking cocaine is not produced after the first and even after repeated use of it."
The fact that many drugs in those days were regarded as useful evidence and observations French psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, who during his three-year trip to Arab countries drew attention to the popularity of hashish and thus a relatively small number of mental patients.
On his return he published his notes, which recommended the use of cannabis by doctors to dive into an artificial frenzy, to better understand their patients.
New volunteers
The second half of the twentieth century added to the world treasury of the experimenters, mostly among the musicians who sought to spur the imagination and expand the boundaries of his own consciousness.
It was in those years two Harvard psychologists - Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert - produced a kind of "leadership" to the use of LSD - "Psychedelic Experience". They believed that LSD is a "sacred substance" that could lead to a spiritual revelation.
Leary, in turn, like John Lennon, came under the impact of "predictions" Aldous Huxley, that the LSD has finally denounce the broad masses of mystical experiences, similar to the religious.
Sam Huxley widely experimented with mescaline and LSD, and described all of their psychedelic experiences to present at the exhibition book, "The Doors of Perception," where he suggests: "The visual impression amplified and the eye gets lost childhood innocence."
The cardinal idea was to complete dissolution of his ego in the immensity of the universe, to willingly rushed rock stars, started to make regular "trip" to eternity, and some of them never returned.
The light psychedelia
At the exhibition I met the legendary Joshua White, who became famous in the 60 years of his psychedelic light show that accompanied the performances of The Who, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
Commissioned by the organizers of Wight together with the artist Sefom Kirby built in one room mini-svetoustanovku to recreate the atmosphere of those years.
"It was an interesting time in America - 60-ies, because there was a need for visual stimulation, people want to look at something interesting - says Joshua." - Life has been visually boring, as in Russia. I was in Moscow in 1991 , and remember what emotional and there were people like dark all around it: you come into the room, and there is a lamp lit the ceiling. So in America in the 50 years was just as well. You go to a rock concert, and then black curtain and a whole spotlight. The audience, of course, wanted more, and were born light show. "
The constantly changing kaleidoscope of light, and the volume and diversity of the exhibition, the imagination, and a hike is not too much to contain at least some of the information shown here - in movies, pictures, books, sound, color.
Interest is also quite obvious: the people - almost like the Louvre with the Mona Lisa, and everyone leaves as dumbfounded: so much heard about this, maybe even tried it, but it turns out, that's how it all!
I was struck by three colossal figure webs, woven by spiders under the influence of Benzedrine, marijuana and caffeine during the experiment by NASA in 1993: if the first two web is somehow reminiscent of spider's web - with the center and radiating and concentric circles, then the third, caffeine "- is complete nonsense.
Moral? But I'm not the Duchess of "Alice in Wonderland", I was never able to make the exhibition a certain morality, but in any case did not go to drink coffee in a cafe adjacent to the museum.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/radio/r...iety_exe.shtml
© BBC 2010
14.11.2010, 07:28
Kaif for all ages: an exhibition of drugs in London
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