584 D]iuas, jfARcoTics, etc. 



scure, and it is highly probable that the chemical composition of 

 the soil plays a most important part in this respect. Dr. O'Shaugh- 

 nessy is certainly the most accomplished chemist who had ever, in 

 India, turned his attention to the subject, and he has published 

 the results of his analyses of specimens of opium from the different 

 di\dsions of the Behar Agency, which are worthy of much attention. 

 In the opium from eight divisions of the agency, he found the 

 quantity of morphia to range from If grains to 3 J grains per cent., 

 and the amount of the narcotine to vary from f grain to 3^ grains 

 per cent , the consistence of the various specimens being between 

 75 and 79 per cent. In the opium from the Hazareebaugh dis- 

 trict (the consistence of the drug being 77), he found 4| per cent, 

 of morphia, and 4 per ceut. narcotine ; whilst from a specimen of 

 Patna-garden opium he extracted no less than lOf per cent, of 

 morphia, and 6 per cent, of narcotine, the consistence of the drug 

 being 87. With respect to the last specimen, Dr. O'Shaughnessy 

 mentions that the poppies which produced it were irrigated three 

 times during the season, and tliat no manure was employed upon 

 the soil. It is much to be regretted that these interesting results 

 were not coupled with an analysis of the soils from which the speci- 

 mens were produced, for to chemical variations in it must be 

 attributed the widely different results recorded above. 



Opium as a medicine has been used from the earliest ages ; but 

 when it was first resorted to as a luxury, it is impossible to state, 

 though it is not at all improbable that this was coeval with its 

 employment in medicine, for how often do we find that, from 

 having been first administered as a sedative for pain, it has been 

 continued until it has taken the place of the evil. Such must have 

 happened from the earliest ai':es, as it happens daily in the present; 

 but as a national vice it was not known until the spread of Islam- 

 ism, when, by the tenets of the Prophet, wine and fermented 

 liquors being prohibited, it came in their stead along with the bang 

 or hasch-schash (made from hemp), coffee, and tobacco. From the 

 Arabs the inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago most probably 

 imbibed their predilection for opium, although their particular 

 manner of using it has evidently been derived from the Chinese. 

 China, where at present it is so extensively used, cannot be said to 

 have indulged long in the vice. Previous to 1767 the number of 

 chests imported did not exceed 200 yearly ; now the average is 

 50,000 to 60,000. In 1773 the East India Company made their 

 first venture in opium, and in 1796 it was declared a crime to 

 smoke opium. 



In different countries we find opium consumed in different ways. 

 In England it is either used in a solid state, made into pills, or a 

 tincture in the shape of laudanum. Insidiously it is given to 

 children under a variety of quack forms, such as " Grodfrey's 

 cordial," &c. In India the pure opium is either dissolved in water 

 and so used, or rolled into pills. It is there a common practice to 

 give it to children when very young, by mothers, who require to 

 work and cannot at the same time nurse their offspring. In China 



