Pour une histoire de l’usage médical des stupéfiants : état des lieux et perspectives
Histoire médecine et santé January 1, 2024 Zoë Dubus
Historiography, particularly in France, traditionally presents narcotics as uniformly dangerous, focusing on addiction, deviance, and societal risk, which obscures research into their therapeutic uses—uses that originally integrated these substances into Western practices. This article offers a critical analytical review of historical research on the 'career' of narcotics as medicines, a field dominated by Anglo-American literature and by medical professionals not trained in historical methods. It also identifies research paths to enrich understanding of the medical uses of these controversial substances.