Hello.
I’m Dr Douglas Small. I’m a historian, author, and academic. I work on the history of medicine, drugs, disease, and crime from the nineteenth century to the present.
I’m also a literary scholar. My research uncovers how real-life medical history has shaped our favourite fictions, from Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and from Dracula to Disney.
I’ve appeared on TV and radio on shows like BBC’s ‘Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the case of Arthur Conan Doyle’, Dan Snow’s History Hit, and BBC History Extra. I’m also a regular contributor to magazines like History Today, Aeon, and BBC History.
I’m available for interviews, public talks, writing, and historical consultancy.
Shortlisted: University English Book Prize 2024
Cocaine, Literature and Culture, 1876-1930
Cocaine, Literature, and Culture is the first significant study of cocaine in the cultural imagination of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It traces the paradoxical history of this substance in an age when it was understood as both an icon of modern technology and a dangerous agent of addiction. Featuring detailed readings of the Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as the works of Arthur Machen, Elizabeth Thomasina (L.T.) Meade, and Aleister Crowley.
Bloomsbury Academic. 2024.
Sean A. Witters
Senior Lecturer, University of Vermont
Cocaine, Literature and Culture presents a vital body of research and records lost and overlooked implications of cocaine as both substance and metaphor. Drug history is suffused with ideological snares and retrospective impositions. Small’s approach is not simply corrective but rather helps us to grasp the powerful effects of this singular substance on the Victorian imagination.
Jessica Thomas
The British Society for Literature and Science
Cocaine, Literature and Culture, 1876–1930, is a refreshing exploration of cocaine in the public imagination, concentrating on cocaine as it appears in fictional narratives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries … A highly readable and entertaining, text. Small’s writing style is both fluent and entertaining, as he offers new and exciting perspectives on the use of cocaine during the period 1846–1930.
Historian
I’m an expert on the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My research explores how medicine and science have shaped people’s daily lives from the reign of Queen Victoria, to the Jazz Age, and beyond.
I’m passionate about uncovering how people in the past thought about their bodies: how they tried to keep them healthy; how they pushed them beyond their limits with new drugs and technologies; and what they thought about disease, death, and ‘going under the knife.’
I love collaborating on projects and I’m available for historical consultancy, fact checking, magazine articles, and interviews. I’m happy to discuss almost any aspect of medical history. Some of my main areas of expertise are:
Drugs
From tobacco to patent medicines, and from opium to your morning coffee, I’m an expert on the histories of substance use and abuse. My book on the history of cocaine was funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Doctors and Detectives
As Sherlock Holmes once said: “When a doctor goes wrong he is the worst of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.” I’ve published extensively on how cultures perceive the links between medicine, crime, and disease.
Sport and Performance Enhancement
Nowadays we think of sports doping as the worst kind cheating, but it wasn’t always that way. My latest project explores how people in the past played sports, tried to give themselves the edge in competition, and how they set the limits of fair play.
Media & Public History
I’m an experienced writer, speaker, and interviewee. Whatever your audience, I am used to packaging the complexities of history and its relevance for today in interesting and accessible ways.
I’ve been interviewed for a prime-time BBC documentary on Sherlock Holmes, and appeared on some of your favourite podcasts to talk about global histories of drugs, sports doping at the Olympics, and the wacky world of Victorian competitive walking!
I have written for magazines including History Today, Aeon, The Conversation and BBC History Magazine.
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Sherlock Holmes
I talk to Lucy Worsley about the great detective’s passion for crime and cocaine.
Dan Snow’s History Hit: The Cocaine Craze in Victorian Britain
How did cocaine go from the sacred plant of the Incan Empire to the cutting edge of nineteenth-century technology? Listen now to find out.
History Today
Check out some of my articles on Old West gunslingers, the history of tuberculosis, and the surprisingly thrilling world of Victorian competitive walking!
Talks
I am an experienced public speaker and university Lecturer, and I love talking to different audiences.
Whether you’re a library, museum, school, society or business, I can tailor my talks to the age and interests of your group. I can also tie in with objects in heritage collections, important anniversaries, local history or school curricula.
I have given talks the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, the Royal College of Psychiatrists Addictions Faculty.
I have presented my academic research around the world including events at the University of Oxford, and as an invited speaker at the University of Vermont, University of Sheffield, and University College Dublin.
I am happy to create custom talks for any audience, in person or online.
The Victorians and Drugs
Opium, hashish, cocaine, laughing gas, & chloroform. Explore the surprising history of Victorian drug use: how they invented and pioneered many of the substances that are still with us today, and why they turned against them…
Sherlock vs. Dracula
It’s 1897 in the gloomy streets of Victorian London. Here there are vampires, but there are also detectives. Explore how the fears and fantasies of Victorian society created some of our most famous fictional characters. Perfect for schools, libraries and literary events.
Tuberculosis
From the Brontës to the Wild West.
Until the discovery of antibiotics, Tuberculosis was one of the most dangerous (and yet the most fashionable) of Victorian diseases. This talk uncovers the history of TB from Haworth parsonage to the saloons of the Old West.
Ghosts in the Machine
How have advances in technology – from magic lanterns to photography and early film – allowed us to ‘see the dead’. This talk will take audiences from the steps of the guillotine in the French Revolution to the darkened rooms of a Victorian séance.
Academic Writing
As an academic, I specialise in the history of medicine, medical humanities, and the culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
My academic posts include a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship (University of Glasgow, 2016-2020), and Lecturer in Nineteenth Century Literature (Edge Hill University). I am an Affiliate at the University of Glasgow.
If you would like to chat about historical consultancy for film, TV, or historical fiction then contact me here.
Keywords: Drugs
Victorian Literature and Culture, 51.3 (Autumn 2023): 391-394.
Primitive Doctor and Eugenic Priest: Grant Allen, M. P. Shiel, and the Future of the Victorian Medical Man
Journal of Literature and Science. 11.2 (Winter 2018): 40-61.
Masters of Healing: Cocaine and the Ideal of the Victorian Medical Man
Journal of Victorian Culture. 21.1 (Spring 2016): 3-20.
Consumptive Killers, 1890-1929: Tuberculosis and Crime Fiction from L. T. Meade to Doc Holliday
[Forthcoming Journal of Victorian Culture]
Sherlock Holmes and Cocaine: A 7% Solution for Modern Professionalism
English Literature in Transition. 58.3 (June 2015): 341-360.
The Phantasmagorical Imagination
eSharp. 11 (Winter 2009): 91-111.
Dr Douglas Small - Historian, Writer, Speaker 