1S53] 



THE NARCOTICS WE INDULGE IN. 



29 



present boast of Sweden, begging of hirn to institute observations 

 (similar to those here proposed) upon the great lakes of his 

 country ; I have also written to the United States, on the same, 

 and circulars have been addressed, officially, to the Engineer 

 Officers stationed at the several great lakes of Russia, as far as 

 the Baikal, for the same purpose. If, as I trust, we shall by these 

 means obtain a mass of well-authenticated information, we shall 

 have one fact more to add to our knowledge of the earth, ancVone 

 fact often leads to many. I sincerely hope the Royal Geographi- 

 cal Society will not consider the subject unworthy their notice. 



To the above I may add that self-registering indicators would 

 be very desirable, because the phenomenon is one which happens 

 only occasionally, and that suddenly, giving no previous warning. 

 These indicators would show what had taken place in the absence 

 of the observer, and if, after a time, the phenomenon was 

 observed to be more frequent than is supposed, or to happen at 

 stated times, then the observers might, so to say, lie in wait for 

 them, and notice all the facts of the case. 



T. JACKSON. 



The Narcotics we Indulge In.* 



In ministering fully to his natural wants, man passes through 

 three successive stages. First, the necessities of his material 

 existence are provided for; next, his cares. are assuaged and for 

 the time banished ; and lastly, his employments, intellectual and 

 animal, are multiplied, and for the time exalted. Beef and 

 bread represent the means by which, in every country, the first 

 end is attained ; fermented liquors help us to the second ; and 

 the third we reach b} r the aid of narcotics. 



When we examine, in a chemical sense, the animal and vege- 

 table productions which in a thousand varied forms, among 

 various nations, take the place of the beef and pudding of the 

 Englishman in supplying the first necessities of our nature, we 

 are struck with the remarkable general similarity which prevails 

 among them naturally, or which they are made to assume by 

 the artifices of cookery, before they are conveyed into the stom- 

 ach. And we exclaim, in irrepressible wonder, " by what uni- 

 versal instinct is it that under so many varied conditions of 

 climate and of natural vegetation, the experience of man has led 

 him e\ ery where so nicely to adjust the chemical constitution of 

 the staple forms of his diet to the chemical wants of his living 

 body V Nor is the lightening of care less widely and extensive- 

 ly attained. Savage and civilised tribes, near and remote — the 

 houseless barbarian wanderer, the settled peasant, and the skilled 

 citizen — all have found, without intercommunion, through some 

 common and instinctive process, the art of preparing fermented 

 drinks, and of procuring for themselves the enjoyments and 

 miseries of intoxication. The juice of the cocoa-nut tree yields 

 its toddy wherever this valuable palm can be made to grow. 

 Another palm affords a fermented wine on the Andean slopes of 

 Chih — the sugar palm intoxicates in the Indian Archipelago, and 

 among the Moluccas and Philippines— while the best palm wine 

 of all is prepared from the sap of the oil-palms of the African 

 -coast. In Mexico the American aloe (Agave Americana,) gave 

 its much-loved pulque, and probably also its ardent brandy, long 

 before Cortez invaded the ancient monarch}' of the Aztecs. 

 Fruits supply the eider, the perry, and the wine, of many civilized 

 regions — barley and the cereal grains the beer and brandy of 

 ■others ; while the milk of their breeding mares supplies at will to 

 the wandering Tartar, either a mild exhilarating drink, or an 

 ardently intoxicating spirit. And to our wonder at the wide 

 prevalence of this taste, and our surprise at the success with 

 which, in so many different ways, mankind has been able to 



* Abridged from Blackwood — August 1853. 



gratify it, the chemist adds a new wonder and surprise when he 

 tells us, that, as in the case of his food, so in preparing his intoxi- 

 cating drinks, man has everywhere come to the same result. His 

 fermented liquors, wherever and from whatever substances pre- 

 pared, all contain the same exciting alcohol, producing every- 

 where) upon every human being, the same exhilerating effects ! 



It is somewhat different as regards the next stage of human 

 wants — the exalted stage which we arrive at by the aid of nar- 

 cotics. Of these narcotics it is remarkable that almost every 

 country or tribe has its own — either aboriginal or imported — so 

 that the universal instinct has led somehow or other to the uni- 

 versal supply of this want also. 



The aborigines of Central America rolled up the Tobacco leaf, 

 and dreamed away their lives in smoky reveries, ages before 

 Columbus was born, or the colonists of Sir Walter Raleigh 

 brought it within the chaste precincts of the Elizabethan court. 

 The cocoa leaf, now the comfort and strength of the Peruvian 

 muletero, was chewed as he does it, in far remote times, and 

 among the same mountains, by the Indian natives whose blood 

 he inherits. The use of opium and hemp, and the betel nut, 

 among eastern Asiatics, mounts up to the times of most fabulous 

 antiquity, as probably does that of the pepper tribe in the South 

 Sea Islands and the Indian Archipelago; while in northern Eu- 

 rope the hop, and in Tartary the narcotic fungus, have been in 

 use from time immemorial. Iu all these countries the wished 

 for end has been attained, as in the case of intoxicating drinks, 

 by different means ; but the precise effect upon the system, by 

 the use of each substance, has not, in this case been the same. 

 On the contrary, tobacco, and cocoa, and opium, and hemp, and 

 the hop, and Cocculus indicus, and the toadstool, each exercises 

 an influence upon the human frame, which is peculiar to itself, 

 and which in many respects is full of interest, and deserving of 

 profound study. These differences we so far know to arise from 

 the active substance they severally contain being chemically dif- 

 ferent. 



I. Tobacco. — Of all the narcotics we have mentioned, tobacco 

 is in use over the largest area, and by the greatest number of 

 people. Opium comes next to it; and the hemp plant occupies 

 the third place. 



The tobacco plant is indigenous to tropical America, whence it 

 was introduced into Spain "and France in the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century by the Spaniards, and into England half a 

 century later (1586) by Sir Francis Drake. Since that time, 

 both the use and the cultivation of the plant have spread over a 

 laro-e portion cf the globe. Besides the different parts of America, 

 including Canada, New Brunswick, the United States, Mexico, 

 the Western coast, the Spanish main, Brazil, Cuba, St. Domingo, 

 Trinidad, &c, it has spread in the East into Turkey, Persia, India, 

 China, Australia, the Phillipine Islands, and Japan. It has been 

 raised with success also in nearly every country of Europe ; _ while 

 in Africa it is cultivated iu Egypt, Algeria, in the Canaries, on 

 the Western coast, and at the Cape of Good Hope. It is, indeed, 

 among narcotics, what the potato is among food-plants — the most 

 extensively cultivated, the most hardy, and the most tolerant of 

 changes in temperature, altitude, and general climate. 



We need scarcely remark, that the use of the plant has become 

 not less universal than its cultivation In America it is met with 

 everywhere, and the cousumption is enormous. In Europe, from 

 the plains of sunny Castile to the frozen Archangel, the pipe and 

 the cigar are a common solace among all ranks and conditions. 

 In vam was the use of it prohibited in Russia, and the knout 

 threatened for the first offence, and death for the second. In vain 

 Pope Urban VIII. thundered out his bull against it. In vam 

 our own James I. wrote his " Counterblaste to Tobacco." Op- 



