Word: opium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Shanghai (pop. 11.9 million) was once the wildest seaport in the world, but the Communists outlawed all its traditional sins when they captured it in 1949. About 30,000 prostitutes were shipped off to rehabilitation centers to learn another profession, and thousands of opium addicts were detoxified and put to work. At the same time, however, much of the reformed city's commercial life also withered. Only in the past few years has Shanghai regained the right to launch private busi nesses, attract foreign investments and keep some of the profits. The physical city is much the same...
DIED. Brassaï, 84, internationally renowned photographer who recorded the nighttime Parisian underworld of whores, hoodlums and homosexuals, of brothels, cabarets and opium dens, with a unique combination of directness, detachment and generosity; of a heart attack; in Eze sur Mer, France. Born Gyula Halász in Brassó (the origin of his pseudonym), in what is now Rumania, he went to Paris in 1924 to sculpt and write, then turned to photography to illustrate his articles. In 1933 his first major collection of seamy scenes, Paris de Nuit, was a sensation; a larger, franker version published...
...comprehending acute pain caused by injury, chronic pain was relegated to the occult realm of medicine men, sorcerers and shamans. Ancient Egyptians believed that chronic pain was caused by spirits, gods and the dead, but by the 16th century B.C. they had discovered a corporeal way to treat it. Opium is recommended as an analgesic in the Ebers Papyrus, an early reference work listing nearly a thousand prescriptions used in the times of the Pharaoh Amenhotep. Egyptians and some Eastern cultures believed that the physical locus of pain was the heart. This...
Poets are known more for their legends, alas, than for their poetry: Coleridge was an opium visionary; Byron slept with his half sister; Dylan Thomas drank 18 straight whiskies and expired. Rainer Maria Rilke is remembered as the poet who pricked himself while plucking a rose, dying of the consequences...
According to the FBI's 341 -page affidavit, Badalamenti and his deputies in Sicily purchased opium from Pakistan and Afghanistan, oversaw its production into heroin, then exported it to the U.S. There Bonanno-family members, including Alfano and his fellow restaurateurs in the Midwest, acted as middlemen. Finally, the money was collected by the Catalano Mob faction and laundered through prestigious New York City brokerage houses...