

OPIUM. 43 



About the year 77 of the same century, Dioscorides^ plainly distin- 

 guished the juice of the capsules under the name of otto? from an 

 extract of the entire plant, ixriKwveiov, which he regarded as much less 

 active. He described exactly how the Civpsules should be incised, the 

 performing of which operation he designated by the verb oTri^eiv. We 

 may infer from these statements of Dioscorides that the collection of 

 opium was at that early period a branch of industry in Asia Minor. 

 The same authority alludes to the adulteration of the drug with the 

 milky juices of Glaucium and Lactuca, and with gum. 



Pliny" devotes some space to an account of Ojnoii, of which he 

 describes the medicinal use. The drug is re|>eatedly mentioned as 

 Lacrima papaveris by Celsus in the 1st century, and more or less 

 particularly by numerous later Latin authoi-s. During the classical 

 period of the Roman Empire as well as in the early middle ages, the 

 only sort of opium known was that of Asia Minor. 



The use of the di*ug was transmitted by the Arabs to the nations of 

 the East, and in the fii-st instance to the Persians. From the Greek 

 word OTTO?, juice, was formed the Arabic word Afyun, which has found 

 its way into many Asiatic languages.^ 



The introduction of opium into India seems to have been connected 

 with the spread of Islamism, and may have been favoured by the 

 Mahommedan prohibition of wine. The earliest mention of it as a 

 production of that country occure in the travels of Barbosa* who visited 

 Calicut on the Malabar coast in 1511. AniQpg the more valuable drugs 

 the prices of which he quotes, opium occupies a prominent place. It 

 was either imported from Aden or Cambay, that from the latter place 

 being the cheaper, yet worth three or four times^ as much as camphor 

 or benzoin. 



Pyres* in his letter about Indian drugs to Manuel, king of Portugal, 

 written from Cochin in 1516, speaks of the opium of Egypt, that of 

 Cambay and of the kingdom of Cous (Kus Bahar, S.W. of Bhotan) in 

 Bengal. He adds that it is a great article of merchandize in these 

 parts and fetches a good price ; — that the kings and lords eat of it, 

 and even the common people, though not so much because it costs 

 dear. 



Garcia d'Orta® informs us that the opium of Cambay in the middle 

 of the 16th century was cliiefly collected in Malwa, and that it is soft 

 and yellowish. That from Aden and other places near the Erythrean 

 Sea is black and hard. A superior kind was imported from Cairo, 

 agreeing as Gargia supposed with the opium of the ancient Thebaid, a 

 district of Upper Egypt near the modern Karnak and Luksor. 



In India the Mogul Government uniformly sold the opium monopoly, 



1 Lib. iv. c. 65. ^Jonrn. de Soc. Pharm. Lusit. ii. (1838) 36. 



-Lib. XX. c. 76. Pires, or Pyres, was the first ambassador 



* There are no ancient Chinese or Sanskrit from Europe to China: Abel Eemusat, 

 names for opium. In the former language Nouv. mdanges amatiques, ii. (1829) 203. 

 the drug is called O^/M-yungr from the Arabic. See also Pedro Jose da Silva, Elogio historico 

 Two other names Ya-pien and 0-pien are e Jioticia campleta de Thoind Pires, phaiina- 

 adaptations to the Chinese idiom of our word ceutico e primeiro nnturaliMa da India, 

 opium. There are several other designa- Lisboa, 1866 (Library of the Pharm. Soc., 

 tions which may be translated /S7Ho)h'HgrrfjV<, London, Pamphlets, No. 30). 



Foreign poison. Black commodity, &c. ^ Aromatum . . . iTuttorta, edit Clusius, 



* Coasts of East Africa and Malabar AxAx. 157-t. lib. i. c. 4. 

 (Hakluyt Soc.), Lond. 1866. 206, 223. 



