230 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



spring, destructive insects, winter freezes or harmful 

 rain during the collecting season, may result in great 

 loss or total failure. There must be an abundance of 

 labor procurable at the critical period, at from thirty to 

 fifty cents per day of fourteen hours. All these con- 

 ditions favor the Turkish opium section. No other 

 people can be more frugal, more patient, more resigned 

 to adversity, or more ready, when failure comes, to 

 begin over again than are the Turks. (This passage was 

 written hi 1908, long before the outbreak of the world's 

 war. But the same national characteristics are no 

 doubt theirs, now as then.) 



Under favorable conditions as concerns climate and 

 care, an acre of good soil will yield from twenty-five to 

 forty-five pounds of opium. It is calculated that to 

 produce this requires 21,000 poppy plants, averaging 

 six capsules each. (This data is from the book of 

 Mr. Agop Alpiar, Chemist of A. Keun and Co., Smyrna, 

 who made the calculation in the field.) In addition to 

 the opium, about 1,000 pounds of poppy seeds are ob- 

 tained, capable of producing 400 pounds of oil, valued 

 at five to eleven cents per pound. This oil is an impor- 

 tant article of food with the frugal agricultural classes 

 of the interior, beyond the zone that produces the olive 

 tree, which does not thrive farther than fifty miles from 

 the sea. The tune of collection lasts, in Turkey in Asia, 

 for two and one-half months, although but a few days 

 for harvesting are possible in any one location. The 

 industrious peasant, in the harvest period, working from 

 daylight to dark, earns from fifteen to forty-five cents 

 daily. If the crop be a success, the land-owner reaps 

 a moderate return for a whole year's care and labor 

 devoted to the most exacting of all crops, not excepting 



