the concrete juice of the white poppy (Papaver somniferum,) a plant of the natural order Papaveraceae. It is obtained by incisions made in the green capsule of the plant when nearly at maturity, from which it exudes as a milky juice that concretes in a brownish mass, which is scraped off the capsule, and collected into lumps such as are found in the market. It is termed by Dioscorides poppyroot decoct, sup or juice of the poppy. It was anciently prepared in nearly the manner above described, and seems to have obtained its name from the Greek word ὀπος. It was used as a hypnotic by the ancients; and was long employed in modern times ere it was analysed. About 1812 it was found by Serturner to be a compound substance; and the subsequent researches of Pelletier, Robi- Opium. quet, Mülder, Anderson, and others, have detected in it no less than sixteen ingredients, besides saline matters,

1. Morphine 2. Narcotine 3. Thebaine 4. Codeine 5. Narceine 6. Porphyroxine 7. Meconine 8. Meconic acid 9. Papaverine 10. Brown extract 11. Cassia 12. Resin 13. Concrete oil 14. Gum 15. Balsam 16. Lignine.

The first nine are crystallizable, the rest amorphous.

The therapeutic or medicinal properties of the drug are due to the morphine alone; and it was a vast improvement in pharmacy to separate it from the other ingredients, which impair its power, or produce disagreeable effects in certain individuals. Thus, some persons suffer from headache, nausea, or intense itching of the skin, from crude opium, who do not experience these effects from morphia, which, on account of its insolubility in water, is generally administered as a muriate or an acetate. The quantity of morphine differs somewhat in different kinds of opium. The best Turkey opium produces usually from 6.25 to 7.50 per cent. of pure muriate of morphia, containing 12 per cent. of the acid; but it is stated that an opium obtained from the purple variety of the P. somniferum in Germany contains a much larger quantity of this valuable principle.

The only other principle in opium of importance is the meconic acid, which affords to the toxicologist his best means of detecting the administration of opium or laudanum with a criminal intent.

Formerly all our opium came from Asia Minor, and the opium of Turkey is still considered the best; but a few years ago the poppy began to be extensively cultivated in India, especially in Bengal and Malwa, the greatest part of which is sent to China, to the extent, in 1856, of 4,735,500 lb. From Turkey, in the same year, we imported 74,914 lb.; from Egypt, 2958 lb.; from the Black Sea and other places, 2652 lb.; or in all, 81,524 lb. Of this quantity, 42,329 lb. were entered for home consumption, but principally employed in the manufacture of the salts of morphia, which are largely exported to various parts of the world. Good opium is also produced in England, in France, and Germany; but the principal European supplies come from Asia, though it has been successfully cultivated in this quarter of the globe.

A good description of the preparation of opium in India is given by Dr Joseph Hooker, who studied the process at Patna, one of the principal opium districts. The capsules are incised by a rude sort of knife with three or more blades, called nastur, which is drawn along the capsules during the hottest time of the day: the white juice exudes and concretes into opium, which is scraped off in the morning. If the night dews are heavy, or if rain falls in the interval, the quality of the drug is much impaired. By 10 A.M. the process of collecting is finished; and an expert operator will thus produce in twenty-four hours about half a pound of opium. Dr Hooker considers the Indian opium inferior to the Turkish; and it certainly yields less morphia. The opium when collected is put into jars, called godowns, for transportation to Patna, where it undergoes the following process to prepare it for the market, according to Hooker:

"At the end of March the opium jars arrive at the godowns by water and by land, and continue accumulating for some weeks. Every jar is labelled and stowed in a proper place, separately tested with extreme accuracy, and valued. The contents of all are thrown into capacious vats, occupying a very large building, from whence the mass is distributed to be made into balls for the markets. This operation is conducted in a long paved room, up and down which the workers sit; every man is ticketed, and many overseers are stationed to see the work properly conducted. Each workman sits on a stool, with a double stage before him, and a tray. On the top stage is a tin basin containing opium sufficient for three balls; in the lower, another basin containing water. In the tray stands a brass hemispherical cup, in which the ball is worked. To the man's right hand is another tray with two compartments—one containing thin pancakes of poppy petals, the other a cupful of sticky opium-water, made from refined opium. The man takes the brass cup and places a pancake at the bottom, smears it with opium-water, and with many piles of the pancake, makes a coat for the opium-ball. Of this coat he makes several layers before he puts it inside the petals, and agglutinates many other coats over it. The balls are again weighed, and reduced or increased to a certain weight, if unequally made up. At the day's end, each man takes his work to a rack with numbered compartments, and deposits in it that which answers to his own number. From thence the balls are carried by boys to the drying-rooms, each being put in a clay cup, and exposed in tiers in the enormous building called the drying-room, where they are constantly examined and turned, to prevent their being attacked by weevils, which are very prevalent during north-east winds—little boys creeping along the racks all day long for this purpose. When dry, the balls are packed in two layers of six each, in chests, with the stalks, dried leaves, and capsules of the poppy plant, and sent down to Calcutta for the opium market, whether every ball is exported. A little opium is prepared, of very fine quality, for the Medical Board, and some for general sale in India; but the proportion is trifling, and such is the demand for opium in China, that the godowns are able to make 30 to 50 balls a day—the total produce being 1000 to 1200 a day. During the working season 1,393,000 balls are manufactured for the China market alone."

The principal use which the Chinese make of opium is to smoke it with tobacco, when it produces a languor so pleasing and seductive that those who indulge in it are as little able to resist the temptation to repetition as the drunkard to relinquish his strong potations. The effects of this vice are even more debasing than that of habitual intoxication by alcoholic liquors,—enfeebling rapidly both the mental and bodily powers. The Chinese have long been the principal consumers of opium; and notwithstanding the drug has latterly been cultivated to a considerable extent in China, the imports into that empire have been largely and rapidly increased. So much is this the case, that while the imports in 1827–30 did not exceed 16,000 chests, they now (1856–57) amount to from 65,000 to 70,000 chests—that is, to from 10,000,000 lb. to 10,800,000 lb. This opium is entirely supplied by India; and being subjected to a high duty, partly levied on its production and partly on its exportation, it produces to the Indian treasury a net return of nearly four millions sterling a year (in 1855–56, Ls.714,353); every shilling of which is, of course, derived from the foreign consumers of opium, or Chinese. This system has been much objected to, but without any good reason. The high price charged for the drug must, of course, lessen its consumption, and consequently, also, the injurious effects which it is said to occasion; so that, while the system we adopt yields a large revenue, it obstructs what is said to be the demoralization of the Chinese. The increasing use of opiates among our operative classes has been strongly condemned by many writers, though we would fain hope that the prevalence of the practice has been somewhat exaggerated; and the inferences on this head, from the quantity of opium imported, do not take into account the large exportation of salts of morphia from Britain, which in 1856 amounted to no less than 112 lb.—equivalent to two-thirds of the opium entered for home consumption.

(See Annalen der Pharmakie, tom. iv.; Journal de Pharmacie, tom. viii.; Parliamentary Reports, "Poisons;" Christie's Toxicology, and Dispensatory; Pharmaceutical Journal, vol. xi.; Dr J. Hooker's Botanical Journal, vol. i.)