The abuse of narcotics was first noticed in Czechoslovakia in the last century, when some cases of opiophagism concerning tincture of opium occurred. Morphine addiction made its appearance in Bohemia in the last two decades of the 19th century; but cases were rare and confined to doctors, pharmacists and a few invalids suffering from serious chronic aliments.
Those cases of addiction were connected, not with the illicit traffic in morphine, but with misappropriations of morphine distributed for medical purposes. Josef Reinsberg , Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Czech University in Prague, mentions morphine addiction in his Treatise on Forensic Medicine , but says nothing about his own experience of the phenomenon.
In the early 20th century certain cases of morphine addiction were observed among medical students, writers and artists.
Cocaine was the third narcotic drug to appear within the present bounds of Czechoslovakia, and it gave rise to a new form of abuse. Before the First World War, cocaine addiction was practically unknown in what is now Czechoslovakia. The eminent Czech psychiatrist, Karel Kuffner , wrote in his Treatise on Psychiatry that he had no personal experience of cocaine addiction.
But the situation changed after , when Czechoslovakia became an independent Republic. In the following years, cocaine addiction began to spread in Prague and other Czechoslovak cities. The habit came from abroad. Abuse of cocaine then spread among prostitutes, dancers, artists and actors especially film actors and thence to other sections of the population.
