The Seven Sisters of Sleep: The Celebrated Drug Classic

Front Cover
Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1997 - Fiction - 304 pages
This groundbreaking survey, written in 1860, is a radically open-minded look at the use of drugs across the world and throughout the ages.
Early users of tobacco in Russia would have their noses cut off and repeat offenders their heads. Pope Innocent XII excommunicated any who used it in St. Peters. Marijuana users in 14th century Egypt would have their teeth extracted for the crime. Yet use of these and other forbidden substances continued to grow. If only as a record of the perennial failure of harsh punishments to deter drug use Victorian naturalist Mordecai Cooke's work The Seven Sisters of Sleep would remain significant. But Cooke's natural humor and keen insights have ensured this work's reputation as possibly the best early book from what has grown into an enormous body of literature on mind- and mood-altering substances. Written at a time, similar to our own, when drug use was being reconsidered, The Seven Sisters of Sleep is a thought-provoking and open-minded look at the use of drugs across the world and throughout the ages.

Quite popular in its day and a major influence on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, this is an important book for anyone interested in an unbiased account of humanity's long involvement with psychoactive, hallucinogenic, and stimulant plants.
 

Contents

SOMEWHAT FABULOUS
1
THE SISTERS OF OLD
9
THE WONDROUS WEED
16
THE CABINET OF CLOUDLAND
30
PIPEOLOGY
45
SNIFFING AND SNEESHIN
57
QUID PRO QUO
72
A RACE OF PRETENDERS
80
NEPENTHES
160
GUNJA AT HOME
174
HUBBLEBUBBLE
189
SIRI AND PINANG
194
UNDER THE PALMS
202
CHEWING THE COON
210
OUR LADY OF YONGAS
216
WHITEWASH AND CLAY
229

MASH ALLAHTHE GIFT
88
THE GATES OF PARADISE
101
REVELS AND REVERIES
114
PANDEMONIUM
124
OPIUM MORALS
137
FALSE PROPHETS
150
PRECIOUS METALS
236
DATURA AND CO
243
THE EXILE OF SIBERIA
253
ODDS AND ENDS
260
APPENDIX
268
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

Mordecai Cooke (1825-1915) was an eminent naturalist, mycologist, and teacher. He was also the author of several scientific studies on mushrooms.