INDIGENOUS OPIUM. 239 
only means which can arrest the rapid and frightful progress of tetanus, 
that dreadful malady. It is the well-known specific for all essentially 
nervous complaints, so that it is employed in a great variety of dis- 
eases. 
A small dose (two to five centigrammes), says M. A. Richard in his 
Medical Botany, calms excitement, allays pain, and produces sweet and 
refreshing sleep. As the last resource of art, it soothes that anguish, the 
source of which cannot be stopped, and renders the last moments of 
existence tranquil when it is no longer possible to prolong them. 
But the demand for opium being always on the increase, owing to 
the increasing avidity with which it is used, as M. Aubergier justly ob- 
serves, often leaves the cultivators without a supply, and fraud then 
takes upon itself to provide for the insufficiency of the crop. 
Monsieur Chevallier, the eminent professor of the school of pharmacy 
in Paris, in his remarkable Dictionnaire des Falsifications, devotes fifteen 
pages to the adulteration of opium. He says that opium has been adul- 
terated in gathering it from vegetable substances and forming a basis of 
from six to seven milimetres deep ; that it has been adulterated with 
the extract of celadine or chelidonium, of the lactuca virosa (lettuce) ; 
of liquorice, of cashew nut, with oil of linseed, gum arabic and gum 
tragacanth, with sand, with bouche de vdche, with earth, with lead, and 
with sediment, with extract of poppy leaves procured by boiling, with 
crushed grapes, and salep powder, &c. According to M. Aubergier, a 
great number of cases have been seized at Havre, containing a produc- 
tion which had only the name and appearance of opium, and not con- 
taining the smallest particle of morphine. 
M. E. Barruil was employed in 1851 to examine, at Marseilles, opiums 
not containing morphine. M. de Smedt, chemist at Borgerhort, received 
in 1846 an opium which had also the appearance of an excellent pro- 
duct, but which however, like the preceding ones, did not contain an 
atom of morphine. 
M. Batka, of Prague, has also described an opium manufactured, at 
all points, not containing either opium or alcaloid. 
A great number of chemists have occupied themselves on this grand 
question of opium : Derosne, Sertuerner, Seguin, Robiquet, Vauquelin, 
Pelletier. M.M. Payen, Cavantow, Conerhe, Deiblane, Chevallier, Bussy, 
Guibourt, Barrail, Ganthier, de Claubry, 0. Reveil, Olivier d' Angers, 
Aubergier, Guillermond, Mialhe, Labarragne, Thiboumerg, Merck, Ber- 
themot, Decharme, Biltz, Robertson, Thomson, Herpin, de Vrey, Legriss, 
&c, have thrown a light upon the composition of this powerful and 
precious narcotic. The result of their labour proves that the propor- 
tion of morphine is very variable, even in opiums reputed to be of good^ 
quality. There have also been found in commerce, opiums presenting 
every degree of strength, from 1*50 to from 12 to 13 per cent, of mor- 
phine. These deviations of opiums in the quantity of morphine they 
contain, are comprised in limits too extensive for the physician or apo- 
