Early 20th century America saw not just a rapid period of innovation in the areas of technology, commerce, communications and weaponry
– but in the vast ways in which man seeks to improve or cure his health
- or simply enhance his pleasure with the aid of drugs. While the use
of alcohol, tobacco, stimulants and narcotics both medicinal and
recreational date back to the earliest days of recorded history, modern
science and industry made their proliferation and popularity
widespread. Rash indulgence in dubious patent medicines and "snake
oils", illegal alcohol, and extralegal drugs gave way to scrutiny, then
caution, and finally, regulation following President Teddy Roosevelt’s election, when Progressive policies
of government began actively working to distinguish cures from
quackery, and helpful remedies from dangerous poisons via legislation
like the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Harrison Act of 1914. Rockstar Games' latest instalment in the True West series highlights these particular sorts of mind-altering products that players may see historically-relevant references to in the Red Dead Redemption game world.
(Left: An in-game advertisement
for Jolly Jack’s chewing tobacco brand as it appears in the Blackwater
Ledger. As was typical of unregulated drugs and tobacco products of the
time, false health benefits were promoted with no mention of associated
risks. Right: A real packaged goods tin container of Bright Tiger
chewing tobacco circa 1905 as exhibited by the New York Historical
Society [Wikipedia Loves Art photo pool: credit _cck_])
CHEWING TOBACCO
The cowboy who chews slowly and shoots quickly is iconic; that’s because, at the time in which Red Dead Redemption takes place, chewing tobacco
was arguably the most popular method for getting the stimulation of
nicotine, as well as tobacco’s strongest form. Use of the drug in its
chewing form dated back to the natives Europeans met upon colonising
America—and these new Americans quickly found it pleasurable and
irresistible. John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, once confessed that in his "early youth [he] was addicted to the use of tobacco in two of its mysteries—smoking and chewing.”
In the early 1900s, chewing tobacco was also commonly used as a poultice
for wounds, and was believed to relieve toothaches, among other pains. The southern United States dominated tobacco production, and many
current major tobacco companies today began by selling it in its chewing
form well over a century ago. The chewing form of the drug was so
persistently embraced that it even survived bans on smoking tobacco in
the nation’s House (1871) and Senate (1914)—by the time of the latter ban, cigarettes
had begun to challenge (and eventually overtake) chewing tobacco in
sales, as pre-blended and pre-rolled smokes provided a boost in their
popularity.
COCAINE
Cocaine, another infamous stimulant, has been consumed in societies for
at least the last 15 centuries or more; evidence of usage of coca
leaves, from which cocaine is derived, has been found in Peruvian grave-sites ca. 500 AD, and controversially, perhaps even among the
Egyptian Pharaohs millennia earlier. By the mid-19th century, the
development of a coca-wine by a Corsican businessman (the original French Connection!)
spurred the subsequent sale of cocaine less than 50 years later in catalogues and drug stores around the world (for ills such as depression,
headaches, toothaches, insomnia and neuralgia), and the creation of the
quite famous soft drink Coca-Cola by Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton.
Red Dead Redemption’s Professor Harold MacDougal,
who found cocaine "a remarkable drug,” wasn’t alone among society
highbrows in praising this vice. Victorian-era celebrities who promoted
cocaine use included psychologist Sigmund Freud, actress Sarah Bernhart, and inventor Thomas Edison. Novelists Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who portrayed his fictitious detective hero, Sherlock Holmes, using the drug, and Robert Louis Stevenson,
whose Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde tale is thought to have been either
influenced by or an allusion to cocaine, even represented cocaine in
classic literature of the time.
Cocaine use exploded in the early 20th century, but ironically, by that
time, the same elites that had embraced cocaine now condemned its
evils. First, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1914, the precursor for the
modern Food and Drug Agency, called for the regulation of habit forming
drugs in food and drink, forcing brands like Coca-Cola to alter their
formulas. Four years later, President Taft warned Congress that the drug was "more
appalling in its effects than any other habit-forming drug used in the
United States…[and was] the most threatening of the drug habits that has
ever appeared in this country.” In stark contrast to its earlier portrayal as a wonder-remedy for the well-to-do, lurid stories of crazed "Negroes” imbued with scary rage and superhuman powers
re-depicted cocaine as a racially-driven menace; the Harrison Act,
heavily controlling and taxing the distribution of previously legal
drugs like cocaine, opium and heroin, was passed that same year.
(Left: Snake Oil is among John
Marston’s Consumables, providing restoration of your Dead Eye abilities;
Right: Nigel West Dickens, the game’s charlatan traveling salesman and
purveyor of the essence.)
SNAKE OILS AND OTHER PATENT MEDICINES
The term "snake oil” is so closely associated with quacks, crooks and
frauds, the legitimate origins of the product often go unreported. In
China, where it is known as shéyóu, snake oil was and still
is considered a reputable remedy for arthritis, bursitis, and other
forms of inflammation and joint pain; and Native Americans used rattlesnake fat
for a similar purpose. Even the ancient Egyptians were said to use
snake fats in some of their remedies. Made from the fats and oils of
the Chinese Water Snake, snake oil is higher in timnodonic acid
(a form of omega-3, the substance found in fish oils like salmon oil,
and in
...
Read more »
