XL 

 THE ORIGIN OF OPIUM 



THAT Europe is the original home of the opium- 

 poppy, and not Asia, is even more contradictory 

 of our settled traditions and belief than the fact that 

 Europeans gave tobacco to the East. Yet it is the fact 

 that opium, like tobacco, came to the Far East from 

 Europe. The opium-poppy does not grow wild in 

 Asia; it is a cultivated variety of a Mediterranean 

 poppy, the Papaver setigerum, which has a pale purple 

 flower, and was conveyed, long ago, by man from the 

 Levant to Asia. We have true poppies of four species 

 which grow wild in England, all with splendid scarlet or 

 crimson petals, easily distinguished from one another 

 by the shape of the seedboxes, or capsules, which they 

 form. If you scratch the surface of the seed capsule of 

 one of these poppies a milky juice appears. It is this 

 which is collected from the capsules of the much larger 

 opium-poppy in India and China, and when dried forms 

 a hard brown cake, which is called " opium." It consists 

 of resinous matter, in which is contained a small quantity 

 of the invaluable narcotic called " morphia," and also 

 small quantities of other powerful poisons. 



The pale - purple poppy of the Mediterranean 

 (Papaver setigerum'} was cultivated hundreds even 

 thousands of years ago in the South of Europe and 

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