Home Collections

Opium

The medical use, cultural impact and complex legacy of opium is uncovered in striking artwork and rare books.

Part of
Narcotics

Images from the collections

Images about Opium

119 images from works
  • Illustrations of China and its people : a series of two hundred photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented / by J. Thomson, F.R.G.S.
  • Two Malay men and a woman sit and recline on the floor smoking opium. Wood-engraving, late 19th century.
  • John Bull as the patient of promotors of competing therapies; representing British parliamentary reform. Aquatint by S. de Wilde, 1809.
  • M0018553: Opium smoking room in Shanghai
  • A parody astrological diagram showing opposing aspects of the life of settlers in Jamaica: langorous noons and the hells of yellow fever. Coloured aquatint after A.James, 1800.
  • Two Chinese opium smokers in a booth watched by a woman who fans herself. Wood-engraving, late 19th century.
  • Illustrations of China and its people : a series of two hundred photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented / by J. Thomson, F.R.G.S.
  • A horse-drawn hearse pulls away from a doctor's; representing the dire state of the medical establishment according to James Morison, pill-vendor and self-styled 'Hygeian'. Lithograph, c. 1848.
  • Illustrations of China and its people : a series of two hundred photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented / by J. Thomson, F.R.G.S.
  • Indian workmen mixing and balling opium in a courtyard in Calcutta. Process print after a photograph by Bourne & Shepherd, c. 1900.
View all

Works from the collections

376 works

View all
China
Opioid-Related Disorders
Substance-Related Disorders
United Kingdom
History, 19th Century
Opium abuse
Opium trade
Cannabis
Smoking
Smoking paraphernalia