CULTURE OF THE POPPY FOR OIL. £87 



the strictest examination concerning this subject, and deliver 



in their report. 



The faculty appointed forty of the most celebrated prac* Report of a 



titioners in medicine as a committee of inquiry, who were SwrSSSito 



witnesses to various experiments accurately made, and whose its fayour. 



report was expressed in the following terms : " cum sensuissant 



doctores, nihil narcotici, aut sanitati inimici in se continere, 



ipsius usum tolerandum esse existimarunt ;" that is, they were of 



opinion, that as there is nothing narcotic or prejudicial to 



health contained in the oil, the use of it might be permitted. 



But this decision was unsatisfactory ; and popular clamours Popular eta- 

 , . , , „ . , .t mours against 



determined the court of justice to pass a decree in the year it> 



1718, whereby the sale of poppy oil, whether mixed or un- 

 mixed, was prohibited, under a fine of three thousand livres 

 for the first offence. Notwithstanding this prohibition, the 

 sale of the article was clandestinely encouraged and gradu- 

 ally increased until the year 1735, when the court issued a 

 severer decree, enjoining it upon superintendants appointed, 

 to mix a certain quantity of the extnact of turpentine to every 

 cask containing lOOlbs. of this oil; of which not less than 

 two thousand casks were consumed in Paris alone. This at- 

 tempt to render the use of it impracticable, had no other 

 influence than to annihilate the public sale of the article, 

 but the secret demand for it increased : till at length, in the 

 year 1773, a society of agriculture undertook to examine 

 with the closest attention all that had been alleged, either by 

 writing or otherwise, for or against the general use of this oil, 

 Experiments were repeated in the presence of the most dis-r 

 tinguished chymists, with the same result, and the Society 

 presented a petition to the Minister of Police, setting forth 

 the great advantages that would accrue both to commerce 

 And agriculture, by reversing the prohibition. 



This petition was put into the hands of persons who vended 

 various kinds of drugs, and who had, as a body, opposed the 

 subject of it, with orders to state all their objections to the 

 medical faculty ; by these means the faculty became masters 

 of every thing that was urged in the debate. They again y\^ determi- 

 made several experiments in the year 1776, and finally con- nation in its 

 firmed the decree of the faculty issued in 1717, declaring avoar * 



that 



