THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — MENTAL 3.59 



latter residence in Western India. I paid the closest 

 attention to the subject during the whole of the years I 

 was there, and had every kind of experience in relation 

 to it, having at different periods been in medical charge 

 of the Southern Mahratta Irregular Horse, the 8th 

 Madras Cavalry, the Srd Bombay Native Infantry, a 

 battery of Artillery, the jail and civil station of 

 Sholapore, and the steam frigate Ajdctha. . . . Sub- 

 sequently, and for the remainder of my service, I was 

 attached to the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital, Bombay, 

 and was in succession Professor of Anatomy and Physi- 

 ology, and of Botany and Materia Ilcdica, at Grant 

 Medical College. I was also a J. P., and a visitor of the 

 jails in Bombay, and the year I was sheriff I regularly 

 visited them. Besides this, I was probably more inti- 

 mately familiar with all classes of the native population 

 than any other European of my generation ; while, as 

 an ever-active journalist (I was a journalist from the 

 first day to the last of my service in India), I was mixed 

 up in almost every discussion of this sort during my 

 time in Bombay. Well, in all the experience — as here 

 precisely detailed, and capable therefore of being 

 checked at every point — I thus had of the indigenous 

 life of Western India, I never once met with a single 

 native suffering, or who had ever suffered, from what is 

 called the excessive use, or from the habitual use of 

 opium ; and, except cases of accidental or wilful poison- 

 ing by opium, I never knew of a single instance of 

 death from its use ; and I have never met with any one 

 who, in his own personal experience, has known a case 

 of death, or of injury to health, from the habitual use 

 of opium as practised by the people of any part of India 

 proper. I exclude Burmah ; I know nothing of it. 

 ... So far as I can remember, in the printed tables 

 used in Indian civil and military hospitals for the entry 

 of diseases, there is no column for the 'oi^ium habit,' 

 nor for ' deaths from opium.' On the strength of my 

 personal experience, I should be prepared to defy any 

 one to bring forward, from their personal experience, a 

 single authentic record of death, or shortened life, from 

 habitual opium eating or drinking in India. If any one 



