4 OPIUM : 



calls it oxo? fj.r'iKwvo^. From OTTO'?, "juice," was formed omov in Greek, and Opium in 

 Latin. MT'IKWV is the Greek name of the Poppy. HIPPOCRATES lived in the fifth 

 century: before Christ. He was famous as the founder of Greek medical literature, 

 and to him certainly the virtues of the Poppy were known. 



In VIRGIL we find the Poppy described as pervaded by lethean sleep (" Lethseo 

 perfusa papavera somno." Georg., i, 78), and he sometimes- speaks of the "lethean 

 Poppy" or the "sleep-giving Poppy" (" soporiferumque papaver." SEncid, iv, 486). 

 He borrowed from Greek mythology, according to which the waters of the river Lethe, 

 which flows through the regions of the dead, cause those who drink of them to forget 

 everything, as is said also to have been the case with the lotus-eaters of HOMER. 

 The Poppy is in VIRGIL connected not only with the mythology of the world of the 

 dead, but with the worship of CERES. This goddess is represented as holding the 

 Poppy in her hands. Conjecture has been busy in attempting to account for this, 

 and it has been supposed that it was because the Poppy grows wild in corn-fields in 

 European countries, or because the seeds of the white Poppy were eaten as food to 

 give an appetite, CERES being thought of by the ancient mind as the bountiful giver 

 of food. To the ancient imagination, however, it would be quite enough to think 

 of the Poppy as the prettiest of the flowers which grow up wild in the midst of 

 wheat, and on this account to dedicate it to the service of the goddess of the 

 wheat-field. When, in the first Christian century, PLINY wrote his Natural 

 History (20, 18 (76), 199) and DIOSCORIDES his Materia Medica, the word "Opium" 

 was already introduced, and the sleepy effects of it were everywhere known. 



2. 



riie Poppy among The Arabians of the Caliphate studied Greek medicine and practised it. 



I lie Arabs. 



Opium became well known among them by its Greek name, which took the form 

 afyfin, through the Semitic habit of changing p to f. In Persia it appeared with 

 the same form (afyun), interchanged with abytin and apy/in, which latter became, as 

 will be seen, the parent of the Chinese name ya-pien (|^f H). Both the Arabs and 

 the Persians had national names for the Poppy : the Arab called it khash-khash, 

 and the Persian kdkndr. Hence we may gather that the Poppy was anciently 



