A History of Drug Use in Sport 1876-1976: Beyond Good and Evil

Abstract

In this slim volume, Dimeo pursues a central argument with which few historians of medicine would disagree: the story of drug use in sport cannot be boiled down to a simple account of good (anti-doping) versus evil (doping). However, the ‘good vs. evil’ motif can often colour arguments in other circles to the extent that apocryphal stories are taken as historical truth. Dimeo clearly illustrates this by citing materials that show that Arthur Littleton, often described as the first victim of doping, was alive and well a decade after his oft-alleged death in 1886. It would be ambitious to promise a global history of all drug use in all sports over a century, and so Dimeo's emphasis is understandably narrower, concentrating on elite, male, European and North American sport. The time-scale is also reduced, with almost 70 years (1876-1945) compressed into the first two chapters, on Victorian and Edwardian sport and drug research from 1920-46. The period 1945-76 is discussed in much more detail, with a chapter dedicated to amphetamines, another to steroids, and two to the introduction and development of international anti-doping policies from the 1960s onwards.