Skip to main content

Time Machine

March 2023
2min read

Purple Haze

On December 28 the evil specter of drug abuse reared its polychromatic head in the pages of the New York Herald . Under the headline WHOLE TOWN MAD FOR COCAINE appeared the sorry tale of South Manchester, Connecticut, where addiction was so widespread that “hundreds of persons have become slaves to the stuff.” The problem had begun when a local druggist compounded a cure for catarrh, a respiratory illness, out of cocaine (then a common nonprescription drug), menthol, lactose, and magnesia. The prescription worked so well that catarrh cases skyrocketed.

Soon devotees were congregating in dark corners to share a pinch of the precious remedy. Strangers stopped one another on the street to beg for a fix. Some “hard working and usually frugal mechanics” put five dollars’ worth—about half the typical wage—up their noses every week. One druggist complained that “well known men and women went to his house at all hours of the night and made him go to the store and get the stuff for them, threatening if he did not that they would break into the place.” A reporter said it was common to see a trolley conductor or motorman “take out a bottle, shake a white powder in his palm and then sniff it with intense satisfaction and a long drawn sigh of relief.” Some residents found in the newspaper’s report an explanation of the strange behavior they had been noticing. A schoolteacher “had known that some of her charges had a white powder, which they appeared to be playing with, but the nature of it was unknown to her until she read the HERALD .”

A few days later S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia, a sixty-seven-year-old doctor and novelist whom one critic has called “conservative to the point of reaction,” gave the Herald his account of a recent medical experiment. Mitchell, a distinguished physiological researcher, had gotten some New Mexican mescal beans from a colleague, and one day he took the extract from six and a half of them and recorded his reactions.

The earliest effects were “great gastric discomfort,” dilated pupils, “a slight sense of exhilaration,” and “a tendency to talk.” Dr. Mitchell continued his medical rounds, visiting and treating patients as he noted these symptoms. Later, while sitting at his desk at home, the doctor became aware of “a transparent, violet haze” about his pen point and felt “a certain sense of the things about me as having a more positive existence than usual.” Reading and writing became more labored, and he noticed “tiny points of light, like stars or fireflies,” as well as “fragments of stained glass windows.”

At this point the dogged researcher went upstairs and lay in a dark room, “hoping for still better things in the way of color.” He got them: floating chromatic films, another shower of white points, brightly colored zigzag lines, puffy clouds in vivid hues, and a spear that turned into an elaborate Gothic tower surrounded by statues and hung with jewels that dripped color. Next came a surrealistic landscape dominated by a gigantic bird claw, followed by a hundred-foot brown worm with flailing green and red tentacles that rotated “like a Catherine wheel” while two leather-clad dwarfs smoked long green pipes. Mitchell’s final vision, which for some reason he found the strangest of all, was “a beach, which I knew to be that of Newport,” washed by colored waves.

Mitchell predicted “a perilous reign for the mescal habit” if the drug became widely available. Commenting on the report, Harper’s Weekly admitted mescal’s “curious and interesting peculiarities” but doubted that it would ever “supersede the familiar exhilaration produced by John Barleycorn.”

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "December 1996"

Authored by: Jeff Kisseloff

A HALF-CENTRY AGO Harry Dubin bought his son a camera, and together they made a remarkable series of photographs of a city full of blue-collar workers—all of them Dubin

Authored by: Frederic D. Schwarz

Bedfellows Make Strange Politics

Authored by: Frederic D. Schwarz

Purple Haze

Authored by: The Editors

Land of the Free

Authored by: The Editors

Putsch Comes to Shove

Authored by: Richard Reeves

A VETERAN JOURNALIST reflects on how public discourse has been tarnished by the press’s relentless war against Presidents—including his own biggest offense

Authored by: Robert K. Krick

COMING TO TERMS WITH THE MOST COMPELLING AND MYSTERIOUS OF CIVIL WAR HEROES

Authored by: Stuart Leuthner

ROBERT MOSES built small with the same imperial vigor as he built big, and at his behest the art of making scale-model cities reached its peak. The result still survives, and although few New Yorkers know about it, they can see their whole town—right down to their own houses or apartment buildings—perfectly reproduced.

Authored by: The Editors

AMERICANS have been scaling down their cities for a century and a half

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.