OPIUM: HISTORICAL NOTE, 



OR 



THE POPPY IN CHINA. 



1. 



THAT the Poppy was cultivated very early in Italy is clear from a passage The r 



' 



in COKNKI.H s XKI-U-S who, in his account of TARQUIN, mentions it in a way to sh\v K 

 that in the time of the last of the Roman Kings it was commonly sown in gard' 

 TAR^I IN s BOH was in a city of Etruria, devising means to betray it to his father 

 without himself losing the confidence of the people, who believed father and son to 

 of hopeless alienation, he having come to their city with wounds on his 

 body, which lit- said had been inflicted by his father as a punishment. He sent a 

 -onger to his father for advice. The father* took the envoy into his garden and 

 struck down all the tallest Poppies. SEXTUS TARQUINIUS knew what this meant, 

 and l>y pn -curing the death or removal from the city of all the chief inhabitants, 

 succeeded in persuading the remainder to submit to his father's rule. 



The Poppy is also alluded to in HOMER as a garden flower. He describes an 



arrow aimed at HECTOR as missing him, but striking in the chest another son of 



PRIAM. He proceeds, "Just as a Poppy in a garden hangs on one side, its head 



laden with fruit and with the dew of spring, so he bent on one side his head, made 



5 I>y his helmet." t The first mention of Poppy juice is by HIPPOCRATES, who 



* Hnic nuntio, quid, credo, dubiiu fidi-i v'ulclmtur, nihil roce responsuiu est. Rex, volnt deliberabundus, 

 in hortum a>dium transit, sequent* nuntio filii : ibi, inambulans tacitus, summa paptiverum capita dicitur 1-aeiiln 

 MS-C. LIVT, i, 54. 



UK rryxixrt K<ipi] /?oAei', >JT' ivl <o}ir<;>, 

 piry ppiOoplvi) vorljfri Tt ilapivrfTiv 

 i-riptaa' ^pw <co^>; mjXijici fiapvvQiv. Iliad, viii, 306-8. 



