44 WHITE POPPY. 



traded. All parts of the plant, except the seeds, 

 contain a narcotic juice, which exists in the 

 greatest quantity in the seed-vessel, and the 

 fields of white poppies that we see on some 

 parts of our landscape are sot\ti for the sake 

 of the capsules, which are used in fomentations 

 to allay pain. They are gathered as they ripen, 

 and as some are matured much later than 

 others, there are often three or four times of 

 gathering during one season. 



The White Poppy is grown in Turkey, 

 Persia, and India, for the opium, which though 

 so valuable a remedy for disease, is a most 

 pernicious drug, when taken habitually, or in 

 large quantities. It is the thickened milky 

 juice of the poppy, which in warmer climates 

 is more highly narcotic than when grown in 

 ours. The drug is obtained by making in- 

 cisions in the capsule at sunset, and in the 

 morning the juice, which has hardened into a 

 kind of gum, is scraped off by women and 

 children, and made into cakes for the purposes 

 of commerce. 



