308 CHINESE MATERIA MEDICA. 



is physical and moral deterioration, insomnia develops, sexual 

 degeneracy supervenes, and there is lack of moral control. 

 The drug is here said to have been brought from p^ 5$i] P£ -^ 

 (Ko-la-pa-hai), "Arabian sea" (?), and was said to be produced 

 in ^ Bg PE (Chiao-liu-pa) and g ^ (Lii-sung), the Philip- 

 pines. Although it was a prohibited article of commerce, 

 there were those who insisted upon having it, claiming that it 

 increased strength and promoted sleep. As a consequence, con- 

 sumption was then on the increase. Some had smoked to the 

 extent that they had ^^^ $!( (P'o-chia-shang-shen), " broken 

 up the home and destroyed the body." The confirmed opium 

 smoker is described as black-faced, weak-voiced, watery-eyed, 

 with prolapse of the bowels, and prospect of an early death. 



The Chinese names at the head of this article are all 

 intended to imitate the Arabian name, ajioiim^ or the Persian 

 ajioun. It is said that the resemblance of the flower of 

 the poppy to that of the Hibiscus^ '^-^ ^ (Fu-jnng), gives 

 cause for the use of these two characters in transliterating. 

 The drug seems to have first come from Arabia or Persia, 

 probably at the beginning by overland route through India. 

 The extension of its use seems to have been more or less 

 gradual. In the Ming dynasty it came into general use in 

 medicine. It was then given as an astringent and sedative in 

 dysentery, diarrhoea, rheumatism, catarrh, coughs, leucorrhcea, 

 dysmenorrhcea, and spematorrhoea, but generally in combina- 

 tion with other drugs. At the present time this practice has 

 largely ceased, and the drug is branded with all the infamy 

 and illegality which belong to the habits of opium-smoking 

 and opium-eating. From the researches of Mr. Hobson, made 

 in the sixth decade of the last century, it appears that opium 

 was a recognized product of the prefecture of Yungchang, in 

 the west of the province of Yunnan, in the year 1736, the 

 beginning of the reign of Chienlung. Growing the poppy for 

 the proditction of opium in the central provinces did not take 

 place until about the middle of the XIX Century, and the 

 popular story in Szechuan is that it was introduced there from 

 India and Thibet towards the end of Chienlung's reign (say 

 about 1780). Fully one-half of the best arable land in Sze- 

 chuan is believed by ]\Ir. Hobson to have been given up 



