An image found in the Tschirch-Fund of the University of Bern showing a naked woman with clawed hands traced to a book of the French writer Victorien Du Saussay entitled “Morphine, vices and passions of a morphinist”, published in Paris in the 1906.Illustrated by the artist of Italian origin Manuel Orazi, the novel describes the vicissitudes of a family of morphine addicts in the Paris of the Belle Époque. It mixes a moralizing speech and text and images full of sensuality. The book is part of the artistic wave that fits in France following the discovery of morphine and the syringe of Pravaz and offers an unusual approach to the well-known theme of the relationship between culture and drugs and pharmacy.