"Flowers in the Blood" by Dean Latimer and Jeff Goldberg (1981)

 

New York City: Franklin Watts (book, history, blurb, introduction), 1981.
9.25" x 6.25" x 1.125", 307 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, ISBN 0-531-09859-1.

Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium by Dean Latimer and Jeff Goldberg, as published in hardcover by Franklin Watts (New York City) in 1981. This is a history of opium.

William S. Burroughs contributes "God's Own Medicine", an introduction to this work, pp. 1-4.

Burroughs additionally has a blurb on the back cover of the dust jacket: "This book covers the subject of opium from the earliest historical references to the recent discovery of opium receptors in the brain, and the body's own painkiller endorphin. Flowers in the Blood provides fascinating documentation for a sane approach to opium and opiates."

This copy traveled with me in April 2026 to a gathering with Jeff Goldberg, Stewart Meyer, and RealityStudio webmaster Keith Seward at the (Burroughs) Bunker at 222 Bowery, New York City, and then to one of Burroughs' favorite spots to eat, Phebe's, where I sat with Jeff, Keith, and poet Max Blagg. Jeff kindly inscribed this copy for me.

Shoaf II.167.

Contents: 

• William S. Burroughs: "God's Own Medicine" (introduction)
• Dean Latimer and Jeff Goldberg: Flowers in the Blood:
• "Preface: Flowers in the Blood":
• "The Body's Own Opiates"
• "On Emotions and Molecules"
• "Eureka! Endorphin and So Much More"
• "The Pituitary's Pharmacopoeia"
• "One: Legends":
• "How Opium Came to the Burmese Highlands"
• "Philistine Opium-pipes and Poppy-shaped Vases"
• "The Plant of Joy"
• "The Poppy Goddess"
• "Homer's Nepenthe"
• "Hippocrates, Galen, and Opium as Medicine"
• "Two: Drugs of Good and Evil":
• "Hashish: The Scourge of Medieval Islam"
• "The Strange Ways and Drugs of the Ancient Scythians"
• "What the Qur'an Doesn't Say"
• "The August History of Afyon in the Middle East"
  
• "Three: The Stone of Immortality":
• "Opium in Medieval Europe"
  
• "Marvelous Paracelsus and the Anodyne Specific"
• "Sir Christopher Wren: The First Intravenous"
• "'The Mysteries of Opium Reveal'd'"
• "Addiction Discovered (Reluctantly)"
• "Four: The British Experience":
• "Revolting Drugs and Vile Practices in the English Fens"
• "The Scandal of Working Class Stimulation"
• "George III's Porphyria and George IV's Hangover Remedy"
• "A Death Drug"
• "Five: The Dreamers":
• "A Brief Account of the 'Opium-Eater'"
• "The Case of Poor Coleridge"
• "Sir Walter Scott: A 'Monstrous, Gross' but Necessary Medication"
• "John Keats: Laudanum, Love, and Death"
• "Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 'Poetical Paragraphs and Morphine Draughts'"
• "Wilkie Collins: A Most Self-possessed Drug Addict"
• "Opium and the Other Romantics"
• "Six: China: The Opium Wars":
• "Jardine-Matheson and the Honorable Opium Entrepreneurs"
•  "The Arrival of the Redheaded Barbarians"
• "The Cinese Opium Epidemic Reconsidered"
• "Chaos in Guangdong"
• "Opium Traders Held Hostage"
• "An Unspoken War"
• "Jesus Opium"
• "Seven: American Afyon":
• "Perkins of Boston vs. Wilcocks of Philadelphia"
• "Houqua of Whampoa: The Richest Man in the World"
• "John Jacob Astor and the Opium Trade"
• "The 'Emily' Affair"
• "The Cunning John Latimer"
• "Eight: Nervous Waste":
• "The Wide Open American Opium Market"
• "The Annoying Tendency to Self-injection"
• "Modern Times and Morphine"
• "Self-abuse and Drug-abuse"
• "Nine: Yellow Peril":
• "Mark Twain's Chinatown"
• "The Chinese and the Job Market"
• "Samuel Gompers and the 'White Labor' Movement"
• "The Chinaman's Vice"
• "Yellow Journalism: Coolies, White Women, Children, and Opium"
• "Ten: The Father of American Narcotics Laws":
• "The State Department's Hamilton Wright"
• "The Child Races Act"
• "Liquor on His Breath Disgraces Wright"
• "The Harrison Narcotics Act"
• "Eleven: Heroin Boys":
• "The Urban American Blight"
• "Bayer's Marvelous Mega-Apririn"
• "Chippers and Addicts"
• "Youth Gangs, Bolsheviks, and Heroin"
• "Harry Anslinger and Heroinomania"
• "Twelve: The Cure":
• "The Elusive Autotoxin"
• "Addiction: Vice or Disease"
• "Federal Narcotics Farms"
• "The Case for Methadone Maintenance"
• "Epilogue: The Business":
• "Inevitable Results of Unsound Legislation"
• "The Economics of Heroin"
• "The Anslinger-McCarthy Connection"
• "The 5 Percent Solution"
• "Drug Control: A $52 Billion Business"
• "For Further Reading"
• Index