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 1500 a.p. 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. 
