Overview
A physician likely born around 1850-1860, Pettey was controversial in his time for criticizing substances like heroin and opium in all its forms as addictive, regardless of the method of ingestion. He also proposed a now-discarded theory of addiction that relied on toxins and internal medicine over psychology or neurology.
Pettey’s motivations were personal and social. From his 1913 book, The Narcotic Drug Diseases and Allied Ailments: Pathology, Pathogenesis, and Treatment, he writes:
“The author had, recently, under his care a Harvard graduate who, with a class of four others, became addicted to morphone during the last year of their medical course, they having the assurance of one of the faculty that the use of morphine hypodermically would not produce addiction. Four of this quintet died prematurely, two committing suicide, while the fifth after thirty-seven years of enslavement was finally released by treatment. These fallacious teachings did much to increase the number of habitual users of opium, but aside from these influences the discovery of morphine and the perfection of the hypodermic syringe have been the greatest factors in extending the use of narcotics.”
Pettey’s decision to skip over the general history of substance use to relate a tragedy he personally observed comes remarkably close to the way books are still written about addiction, treatment, and recovery. Both medical practitioners and lay writers covering the topic of addiction begin by explaining the grief and hope that motivate their work:
“It has only been during the last quarter of a century, however, that narcotic addiction has grown to such proportions as to attract much attention. The evil is now recognized as alarmingly extensive and rapdily spreading. It is hardly profitable, therefore, at this time to consider farther the origin and growth of the addiction. This has been sufficiently done by others.”