Joseph Lister Quotes
Opium soothes; alcohol maddens.
Lister only compared opium in its then usual form. Stronger opiate derivatives such as Heroin and morphine were not studied by him at the time.
Joseph Lister, 1827-1912, Physician & Scientist, President of the Royal Society, Finding regarding drugs at the turn of the century
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was the first Chinese official to make opium illegal. However, British many merchants were involved in a complicated trade scheme whereby they brought opium to Canton. They paid not attention to the new laws against opium the same as their Chinese customers. Lin Zexu, perceiving Queen Victoria to have powers equivalent to the Chinese Emperor who could do anything in China, He assumed that the Queen could and would control the merchant’s behavior, and before punishing the British merchants, he was putting the Queen on notice. There is no record of what Victoria did, if anything. When Lin Zexu tried to enforce his ban on opium, the British Merchants resisted and the First Opium War broke out between China and Britainin which the Chinese were humiliated and resent to this day. A bronze statue of Lin Zexu was erected in his honor in Chatham Square (Kimlau Square) of New York City's Chinatown.
Cixi had issued a 10 point edict designed to end opium use in China. One of its most interesting elements was that it only applied to Chinese under the age of 60. She recognized that for those elderly people who are thoroughly addicted to opium, prohibition would be to radical a change and their life expectancy was not very long. At the time, the average lifespan of Chinese was under 50.
Friedman was an advocate for the legalization of illicit drugs, claiming that the harm that is done by making drugs illegal is greater than that which would occur if drugs were legalized. He also observed that alcohol kills times the number of Americans than does illegal drugs and tobacco kills four times as many as alcohol.
Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister OM, PC, PRS, FRCSE, FFPS, was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery. From a technical viewpoint, Lord Lister was not an exceptional surgeon, but his research into bacteriology and infection in wounds raised his operative technique to a new plane where his observations, deductions and practices revolutionised surgery throughout the world.
