294 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



The poppy (Papaver somniferum). This is the plant cultivated 

 for its opium, which is extracted from the milky juice, and from 

 which morphine is made. Opium produces a deliciously dreamy, 

 half -conscious state, out of which the subject wakens with re- 

 luctance, and into which he is most likely to again submerge 

 himself. If he surrenders to this most dangerous drug for a 

 little time, he is most likely to turn out an " opium fiend," with 

 little prospect for the future, for experience shows that these 

 unfortunate people will practice the cunning of the keenest 

 lunatic to possess themselves of the drug, when once the habit 

 is formed. 



The opium poppy is native not to China but along both 

 shores of the Mediterranean, where it has long been cultivated, 

 even since the time of the lake dwellers. It spread into Arabia 

 and India, where it is eaten, not smoked, and finally reached 

 China in the neighborhood probably of 1 500 a.d. These people, 

 with malevolent instinct, learned to smoke the drug, in which 

 way an exceptionally strong effect is produced. To the credit of 

 modern China the cultivation of this poppy is being prohibited. 



Coca {Erythroxylon coca). This is a narcotic plant growing 

 wild in the Peruvian Andes, and is chewed by the natives with 

 a little unslaked lime, producing an effect akin to that of opium. 

 The alkaloid cocaine, which is extracted from the leaves, is, like 

 opium and morphine, a dangerous drug, except in the hands of 

 the physician, and is subject to the same abuse.^ The leaves 

 are exported in enormous amounts (over thirty million pounds a 

 year), more than ten million people being addicted to the use 

 of the drug. It is not yet cultivated, so far as is known to the 

 writer, but a demand like this will bring cultivation when the 



they are dulled by a sedative, he feels soothed : in either case he feels better 

 and buys more medicine. Such medicines are known to the trade as " re- 

 peaters," because the more is used the more is needed, and the appetite once 

 formed is insatiable. 



1 Some of the so-called " celery compounds," patent medicines of a few 

 years ago, depended for their effect upon cocaine as does one of the popular 

 and widely advertised drinks of to-day. 



