Indian chapter relating to the producers, and
a Chinese chapter relating to the consumers
—to give a plain account of the matter:
steering clear between the merchant-bias on
the one hand, and the missionary-bias on the
other.

Opium, then, is a brownish substance,
smoked and chewed in a manner somewhat
analogous to tobacco, and to gratify a similar
craving. It is the juice of the white poppy,
solidified and otherwise prepared. This plant
is extensively grown in Asia and Europe,
sometimes for the sake of the oil contained
in the seeds, sometimes for the medicinal
properties of the capsules, but more generally
for the peculiar opiate qualities of the juice.
Although the Turks, Syrians, Egyptians, and
Persians cultivate the poppy for the sake of
the opium, this branch of husbandry is more
especially attended to in India; not through
the superior qualities of the soil or climate,
but from an all-powerful money-motive,
presently to be elucidated. Much care and
labour are needed in preparing the ground
and tending the young plants, and many
sources of injury are due to fluctuation in
wind, rain, and dew: hence the growth of
the poppy for opium is rather precarious. In
India, the cultivation takes place in the cold
season, and the manuring and watering are
sedulously attended to. Soon after the flowers
fall, the plant is ripe for the opium harvest.
The people flock to the fields in the evening,
armed with crooked-bladed knives, which
are employed to cut incisions in the capsules
or poppy-heads, in various directions. They
then retire for the night; and on resuming
field-work early next morning, they find that
juice has exuded through the incisions, and
collected on the surface. At first it is white
and milky, but the heat of the sun speedily
converts it into a brown gummy mass, in
which state it is scraped off. The thickened
juice, in crude opium, is collected as it exudes
day after day, until all has been obtained;
and this total quantity is affected, not only
by the whole routine of culture, but by the
state of the weather during the cultivation
and collecting. The produce is either simply
dried; or, to equalise the quality, the whole
of the day's collection is rubbed together in a
mortar or similar vessel, and reduced to a
homogenous semi-fluid mass, which is then
quickly dried in the shade.

At this point it becomes necessary to
understand the qualities for or on account of
which opium is consumed by man. We have
briefly noticed the opium culture, taken in
its simplest form, without regard to any
other interests than those of the cultivator.
But we cannot now stir a step further in the
narrative, without attending to those qualities
in opium that have determined the
proceedings of the East India Company. The
art of deriving a revenue from this commodity
has been invented by the Company, and
has become the basis for a vast trade between
India and China. Had opium been employed
merely as a medicinal drug, we should never
have heard of opium wars in the Celestial
Empire; since, owing to the strength of the
drug, a little would go a great way in the
hands of the medical practitioner. The poppy
yields morphia, narcotina, codeia, meconine,
and other substances invaluable in the healing
art; and it is the source whence laudanum,
spirit of poppies, and a host of nostrums
under the names of Godfrey's cordial,
paregoric elixir, black drop, sedative liquor,
Jeremie's solution, &c., derive their chief
qualities. But the sick consume very little
of this substance; it is by men, men hale
enough to dispense with the use if they so
please, that the market-supply of opium is
mostly taken off. Those who do not take
opium as an indulgence can form no adequate
conception of the effect it produces; and
must therefore be dependent on opium-eaters
and smokers, or on medical writers, for
information on this subject. The collectors of
opium are generally pale, and affected with
tremblings; and if opium be heated, the
vapours mixing with the air of the room have
a tendency to produce insensibility in man
and the lower animals. It acts either as a
stimulant or a sedative, according to the
quantity taken, the frequency of repetition,
and the state of the system when it is
administered. M. Pereira states that, to persons
unaccustomed to its use, the eating of less
than a grain of opium generally produces a
stimulant action; the mind is exhilarated,
ideas flow more quickly, a pleasurable condition
of the whole system is experienced,
difficult to describe; there is a capability of
greater exertion than usual; but this is
followed by a diminution of muscular power,
and of susceptibility to the impression of
external objects; a desire of repose comes on,
hunger is not felt, but thirst increases. Very
soon, however, the craving increases by that
which it feeds upon; the pleasurable stimulus
is only renewable by increasing the dose,
insomuch that a portion of a grain no longer
produces the result yearned for. When the
quantity reaches two or three grains at a
dose, the stage of excitement is soon followed
by the stage of depression; the pulse is full and
rapid, then faint and slow; the skin becomes
hot, the mouth and throat dry, the appetite
diminished, the thirst increased, the taste of
food deteriorated by nausea, the muscles
enfeebled, the organs of sense dull, the ideas
confused, and the inclination torpid: in
short, the pleasurable stage is brief compared
with the painful stage that follows it. Four
grains, to a person quite unaccustomed to its
use, are likely to be fatal; but to an opium-eater
or smoker this is only a very moderate
dose. The Turks, who in many cases take
opium as a stimulant because their religion
forbids the use of wine, begin with perhaps
half a grain; but the mania carries them to
such a length that, when the habit is fully