Alcohol, psychiatry and society: Comparative and transnational perspectives, <i>c.</i> 1700–1990s

This book addresses head-on one of the central debates in the history of alcohol and intoxication, the supposed ‘medicalisation’ of alcohol from the nineteenth century onwards. The chapters show that the very concept of medicalisation as used in the history of medicine and psychiatry needs to be more closely interrogated, with each case study in the volume demonstrating the complexities of medicalisation in practice: limited funding, state control of healthcare, ideological constraints and tensions between legislation and traditional cultural practices. The engagingly written chapters call attention to the many obstacles and challenges that historians face when they explore the relationship between medicine and alcohol. The volume also explores the shift from the use of alcohol in clinical treatment, as part of dietary regimens, incentive to work and reward for desirable behaviour during earlier periods to the emergence of ‘alcoholism’ as a disease category that requires medical intervention, is covered by medical insurance and is considered as a threat to public health. The book’s broad international scope goes well beyond the focus on Western Europe and the USA in existing historical writing. Despite the wide-ranging geographical focus, key themes are consistently brought out: definition and diagnosis, links between alcohol and crime, the rhetoric of social and economic degeneration, the impact of colonialism and the role of families in alcohol treatment. Front Matter Contents List of figures List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: comparative and transnational perspectives on alcohol, psychiatry and society, c. 1500–1991 Corrupting the body and mind: distilled spirits, drunkenness and disease in early modern England and the British Atlantic world Alcoholism, degeneration, madness and psychiatry in Spain, 1870–1920 From nutrition to powerful agent of degeneration: alcohol in nineteenth-century Chile and Brazil ‘White man’s kava’ in Fiji: entangling alcohol, race and insanity, c. 1874–1970 ‘In the hot and trying climate of Nigeria the European has a much stronger temptation to indulge in alcohol than the native’: drunkenness in Nigeria, c. 1880–1940 Alcohol, abstinence and rationalisation in Germany, c. 1870s–1910s ‘Disciples of Asclepius’ or ‘advocates of Hermes’? Psychiatrists and alcohol in early twentieth-century Greece The fear of the immoderate Muslim: alcohol, civilisation and the theories of the École d’Alger, 1933–1962 Alcoholism, family and society in post-World War II Japan ‘May it last, such peace and life’: treating alcoholism in Tito’s Yugoslavia, 1948–1991 A cradle of psychotherapy: treatment of alcohol addiction in Communist Czechoslovakia, c. 1948–1989 ‘A society that is sinking ever deeper into a state of chronic alcohol poisoning’: medical and moral treatment of alcoholics in the Soviet Union, c. 1970–1991 Index The medicalisation of alcohol use has become a prominent discourse that guides policy makers and impacts public perceptions of alcohol and drinking. This book maps the historical and cultural dimensions of the phenomenon. Emphasising medical attitudes and theories regarding alcohol and the changing perception of alcohol consumption in psychiatry and mental health, it explores the shift from the use of alcohol in clinical treatment and as part of dietary regimens to the emergence of alcoholism as a disease category that requires medical intervention and is considered a threat to public health.