JS MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



It appears to us highly probable, that the white poppy might he 

 cultivated for the purpose of obtaining opium to great advantage in 

 Britain. Alston says, " the milky juice, drawn by incision from 

 poppy- heads, and thickened either in the sun or shade, even in this 

 country, has all the characters of good opium ; its colour, consist- 

 ence, taste, smell, faculties, phaenomena, are all the same ; only, if 

 carefully collected, it is more pure and more free of feculencies." 



Similar remarks have also been made by others, to which we 

 may add those of our own ; for during a late summer, we at diffe. 

 rent times made incisions in the green capsules of the white poppy, 

 from which we collected the juice, which soon acquired a due con- 

 sistence, and was found, both by its sensible qualities and effects, to 

 be very pure opium. 



Opium, called also Opium Thebaicum, from being anciently pre- 

 pared chiefly at Thebes, has been a celebrated medicine from the 

 remotest times. It differs from the Meconium, which by the ancients 

 was made of the expressed juice or decoction of the poppies. 



Opium is imported into Europe in flat cakes, covered with leaves 

 to prevent their sticking together: it has a reddish brown colour, 

 and a strong peculiar smell; its taste at first is nauseous and bitter, 

 but soon becomes acrid, and produces a slight warmth in the 

 mouth ; a watery tincture of it forms an ink, with a chalybeate so- 

 lution. According to the experiments of Alston, it appears to con- 

 sist of about live parts in twelve of gummy matter, four of resinous 

 matter, and tiiree of earthy, or other indissoluble impurities. 



The use ot this celebrated medicine, though not known to Hip- 

 pocrates, can be clearly traced back to Diagoras, who was nearly 

 hrs cotemporary, and its importance has ever since been gradually 

 advanced by succeeding physicians of different nations. Its exten- 

 sive practical utility, however, has not been long well understood ; 

 and m this country, perhaps, may be dated from the time of Syden- 

 ham. Opium is the chief narcotic now employed ; it acts directly 

 upon the nervous power, diminishing the sensibility, irritability, and 

 mobility of the system ; and, according to a late ingenious author, 

 in a certain manner suspending the motion of the nervous fluid, to 

 and from the brain, and thereby inducing sleep, one of its principal 

 effects. From this sedative power of opium, by which it allays 

 pain, inordinate action, and restlessness, it naturally follows, that it 

 may be employed with advantage in a great variety of diseases. 



