‘What is it tonight....morphine or cocaine?’: Some observations on late-Victorian drug use and the fictional stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Article by Tom Moult, Edited by Emma Carmichael, Additional Research by Hamish Rogers.

In one of the early adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes casually remarks to Dr. Watson that he can ‘strongly recommend a seven per-cent solution of cocaine.’ Without seeking to brand Holmes a serial addicted drug-user, which he clearly is not nor intended to be, it does present a singular examination of the use of drugs in late-Victorian Britain and its resonation into literature. 

Holmes’s relationship with drugs is partly a method employed by the author to reinforce the depth of his intellectual powers. Anyone who has read any of the many short stories will acknowledge Holmes’s great and successful employment of reason, logic and intellect to deduce even the most minor but fundamental detail and solve the most grotesque mystery. Such is his mental capacity that when he is without work his mind craves mental stimulation, which he finds through injecting himself with morphine or cocaine. What remains to be seen is whether this casual use of drugs by the fictional Sherlock Holmes has any resonances in reality; to the extent that one must ask whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a doctor himself, was suggesting something more complex beneath the surface of late-Victorian society. 

What is important to consider is the contemporary notion of ‘drugs’. Certainly on the one hand excessive opium use, for instance, was seen as a vice of society, but on the other it was both readily available for personal consumption and largely still in its infancy in terms of its application to medicine. In a social context, opium-dens became strongly associated with the East End of London and were often blamed on the immigrant Chinese population. There are links between opium-dens and the rhetoric of the middle-class reformers which were entrenched in the tradition of the temperance movement, where thrift and religious observance were key in attempts to bring about a more virtuous society, devoid of vice. 

On the other hand, opium and other substances such as cocaine and morphine were primarily intended for medical use and their properties as well as potential for medicine were not fully understood at this time. Drug use in this sense might rather therefore be interpreted as an incomplete understanding towards the dangers as well as potentials. Opium was primarily used for pain relief but was also quite often given to troublesome babies; the other extreme was of course the opium-den which was nothing more than wanton self-destruction. Clearly there were examples at both ends of the spectrum. From a medical point of view, opium, laudanum and cocaine were in general use and so consumption of these substances was on a different plane to what it is today. ‘Drug-addiction’ was not generally interpreted in the same way as it is in modern society. 

The contemporary use of literature as an avenue for channelling ideas about narcotics remains a strong anchor. Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray portrays the fall of a decent man to the vices of opium and excess. Sherlock Holmes encounters the opium-den first hand in The Man with the Twisted Lip when he disguises himself in order to gain information from a man lingering in that dark and miserable world. The description given is a vivid one; vacant eyes, pale skin and a general lethargic nature are the effects which Holmes has to imitate. Dr. Watson is astonished to find Holmes in the den when he goes on behalf of a friend who fears her husband has fallen into some sort of opium-based stupor. As Watson arrives and searches for the husband, he meets Holmes who is on the trail of a case. Aside from the mystery of the story, there are some points which are worth mentioning. Dr. Watson’s utter disgust and abhorrence with the opium-den arguably reflects the views of the author, who it has been remarked, tends to channel his views into the character of Watson more than Holmes. What is interesting here is the suggestion underpinning Watson’s search for the missing husband; the destruction of the family sphere at the hands of opium is an important component of the story. To this effect then, one can see how opium-abuse was, for obvious reasons, a vice and a target for middle-class moral reformers. 

Historians and modern observers will, of course, know the benefit of hindsight. Using this hypothesis, we can observe that the Victorians were naïve about the substances they used. Sherlock Holmes is of course a literary character, but his personal consumption of morphine or cocaine should not be interpreted in the same way as the opium-den, despite both substances being ‘drugs’ to modern readers. A literal metaphor from the author might rather be the contrast between excess and control; represented in the latter degree by an intellectual and rational character. 

The intention of this article is not to re-market the character of Sherlock Holmes as a cocaine addict. He clearly is not. Rather, he is situated in an age and a society that held positively differing attitudes towards what today would be called ‘drug addiction.’ Besides, his consumption of such substances is largely a means by the author to reinforce his intellect in comparison with other characters such as Watson. Morphine and opium were in their infancy in terms of medicine, which indeed was their primary function in society and they were first and foremost situated on medical grounds. Attitudes about drug addiction were not the same in late-Victorian society as they are today. It seems that more attention was focussed on the great bugbear of the nineteenth-century; alcoholism. However, perhaps the classic example of Victorian drug abuse remains the opium-den which represents the very idea of self-indulgence and excess; a critique of which would be comfortably at home in the nineteenth-century. 

• After falling largely out of use after the decline of the Roman Empire, Opium was reintroduced to Western Europe in the sixteenth century as a medical treatment. Laudanum, as it was known, was prescribed by some doctors as a cure for sleep deprivation, diarrhoea and as pain relief. By the eighteenth century it was widely used to treat nervous disorders. Whilst used for recreation in China from fifteenth century and in the Ottoman Empire from at least the sixteenth century, non-medical use of opium in Britain boomed in the nineteenth century.

• The growth of opium addiction in nineteenth-century China led to a ban in its importation. The British, who used opium to as a cheap trade substance with China, began the First Opium War (1839-1842) followed by the second Opium War (1856-1860) in which the British were joined by the French. 

• Legal cultivation in Britain today provides opium for the medicinal use only whilst heroin is a Class A drug.

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